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THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


JEFF D. RAY 





EXAN OF PR Ty 
THE A ee 


JUN Zo 1995 


COUNTRY PREACHER ..:°” 


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By JEFF D.’RAY 


Professor of Homiletics and Rural Sociology in the 
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary 
Fort Worth, Texas 





NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE 
SUNDAY SCHOOL BOARD 
OF THE 
SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION 


Copyright 1925, 
Sunday School Board 
Southern Baptist Convention 
Nashville, Tenn. 


Printed in the United States of America. | 


To 
W. A. POOL, D.D. 


A rural pastor from choice—a man who 
has seen his denomination in his county 
grow, largely due to his modest leader- 
ship, from a few hundred to fifteen thou- 
sand—a man who has for nearly half 
a century lived in one rural community 
loved, trusted and honored by all his 
neighbors this little volume is affec- 
tionately Dedicated. 


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PREFACE 


Recently I published a volume on the pastoral office 
in general under the title “The Highest Office.” The 
kind reception accorded it has led me to wonder if 
I might not be in a position to render some humble 
service in writing a little on the more specific and con- 
crete theme, “The Country Preacher.” What is herein 
set down has grown out of experience as a country pas- 
tor, a lifelong intimate affectionate association with 
country preachers, a rather wide observation of country 
pastorates and a ten years’ intensive study of rural 
pastoral problems. 

In the Roman War Councils of his day old Cato had 

just one speech that he made at every Council meet- 
ing, and it was in just three words: “Carthago delenda 
est” (Carthage must be destroyed). Without his pres- 
tige or his ability, but certainly with his depth of con- 
viction and patriotic purpose I have been saying for 
ten years in councils of sociological and religious work- 
ers, I sometimes fear with irritating monotony, “The 
Country Church must be rehabilitated.” 

I hear a good deal of talk these days about this man 
and that being a far-seeing, broad-visioned Christian 
statesman. I certainly lay no claim to any such prophet- 
ic gift, but every day I hear a still small voice say- 
ing that our country’s future demands the re-enforce- 
ment and rehabilitation of our rural churches. For this 
vital task the country preacher is the key man. Others 
may help but more than all other human agencies com- 
bined the task is his. In the hope, and with the prayer 
that I may hearten him a little as he faces this crucial 
task this little book has been written. 

[7] 





CONTENTS 


Page 
I. A Sincere Word of Appreciation ..... 11 
II. The Primacy of the Country Pastorate 21 
III. Some Essentials to an inffective Rural 
MAINISER Yer euler eke mtane Meisel acpl Mik cele G 31 
IV. The Rural Church Outlook ......... 43 
V. Difficulties in Securing Pastors ...... 57 
VI. The Bright Side of the Country 
PASTEPATC eee eel re Mn Uuate leg Gites 67 
VII. The Country Preacher and the Ordi- 
NANGCOS EN ee eM ei create g cub adate ve Mame re tals 19 
VIII. The Country Preacher and His Church 
PLOBERINT Heche we ued etek rate are rovan 
IX. A Step in the Right Direction ....... 105 
&. The Country Preacher and His 


Material Equipment ............. 117 


[9] 





CHAPTER I 


A SINCERE WORD. OB 
APPRECTA TION 


Let every word in all the following pages be interpreted 
in the light of what is said in this chapter. Whatever of 
adverse criticism of the Country Preacher these chap- 
ters may contain, they proceed from the heart of a 
man, who, up to the hilt, loves, appreciates, sympa- 
thizes with and believes in these stalwart evangels of 
the faith. 

In this chapter will be given eight noble character- 
istics of the country preacher, as the author has seen 
him in sixty years of rather intimate association. It 
is not meant that all of them possess all the high 
qualities herein cited. In fact it is freely admitted that 
there is not even one to be found possessing them all. 
Neither is it denied that some of them possess prac- 
tically none of these virtues. But it is contended that 
country preachers as a class more than any other group 
of our citizenship possess, and in their lives illustrate, the 
noble elements of character hereinafter mentioned. 

This chapter is not intended as a fulsome eulogy—a 
fourth-of-July panegyric of these noble men. It is meant 
to set down under proper restraint some things about 
country preachers as a class that every competent judge 
must admit is true. 

1. To begin with then, let us think of his genuine 
doctrinal orthodoxy. Modern history does not furnish 

[11] 


12 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


the record of a heresy which had its origin in the bosom 
of a country preacher. Conservative by nature, he has 
consistently held and persistently defended the “faith 
once for all delivered to the saints.” Largely a man of 
two books—the Bible and the book of nature contained 
in God’s big out-of-doors—it has been difficult to per- 
suade him to follow highbrow theological vagaries. If 
any theological faddist claims that all this is due to his 
ignorance let it be replied that it is rather due to his 
first-hand knowledge of the Bible and Nature, the highest 
channels through which one may learn of God. 

2. There may be also mentioned his high moral stand- 
ards both in faith and practice. Whether it applies to 
his own conduct, the conduct of his church members, or 
that of his neighbors, he is a martinet—a strict dis- 
ciplinarian. He is often ridiculed for the rigidity with 
which he holds to so-called puritanical views in the 
realm of morals, but indifferent alike to the gibes and 
sneers of worldly foes and the well-meant remonstrance 
of sympathetic friends, he has pursued the even tenor of 
his way, in open opposition to every form of ungodliness. 
He has had four pet abominations. (1) Sex immorality 
and all the modern devices that lead up to it; (2) the 
liquor traffic with all its illegal subterfuges; (3) Sabbath 
desecration with all its modern camouflages; (4) finan- 
cial dishonor, whether in dishonest dealing or non-pay- 
ment of debts. Without making invidious comparisons 
it is doubtless true that more than any other single class 
he has played a noble, though non-spectacular, part in 
stemming these tides of evil. His influence here is felt 
not only in the rural neighborhoods where he ministers 
but in cities as well, since they are so largely controlled 
by people who got their moral standards from him back 
in the country home whence most of the city builders 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 18 


came. Eliminate, if it were possible, from our national 
life the moral influence of the country preacher and you 
have given it almost a fatal blow. 

3. But let us think for a moment of his unswerving 
loyalty to altruistic institutions. His loyalty to his 
country is truly noteworthy. During the World War 
there were slackers in the rural districts, but speaking 
as one who had good opportunity to know the temper 
of our people during that period the author bears glad 
testimony to the fact that almost without exception he 
found our country preachers the loyal and enthusiastic 
and sacrificial supporters of every call of our govern- 
ment. | 
But men who go afield in behalf of denominational in- 
stitutions find in our rural pastors this same spirit of 
loyalty. It was a common saying with B. H. Carroll 
that, given a worthy cause, he could always count on the 
endorsement and backing of the country preachers. Be- 
cause of his lack of training he is not always efficient in 
his method of cooperation, but he is nearly always right 
in his spirit and attitude. When J. B. Gambrell was 
making his fight—the last and perhaps most notable and 
far reaching battle of his life—against the disintegrating 
so-called Inter-Church Movement, and in behalf of de- 
nominational independence and autonomy, he found that 
in many cases men at the centres even in his own denomi- 
nation were inclined to yield to the specious arguments 
of federation and unionism. It was in his scantily fur- 
nished room—in the Seminary dormitory, which room 
he used for both bedroom and office—that we were dis- 
cussing it one day. As he paced the bare floor he said, 
with what now seems the voice of a prophet, “Our people 
are not going into this business. Once get the facts out to 
the plain people and this movement will die. I will pitch 


14 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


my fight there. I will stake the whole thing on the 
sanity and loyalty of our country preachers.” He did it, 
and won what practically everybody now sees was 2 
beneficent victory—saving not only his own denomi- 
nation, but all the rest from the enervating effect of 
spineless disintegration. 

4. But another outstanding thing about the country 
preacher is his sacrificial consecration. Some of us 
whose churches or denominational positions pay suffi- 
cient salaries to make it possible for us to live in reason- 
able comfort without secular calling, sometimes mis- 
understand the country preacher who both farms and 
preaches. If he is farming to make money, he deserves 
our reproach, but in most cases this is not the fact. 
In most cases he is farming, not to make money, but to 
make a meagre living for his loved ones while he preaches 
the gospel to weak, poor, poorly developed and often 
parsimonious country churches. It is doubtless true that 
in most, if not in all cases, if he would cut loose from 
the farm, and with a sublime faith throw himself for 
support upon the churches where he ministers he would 
receive a better living than he now gets out of the two 
callings. It is also true that he would do better work. 
It is perhaps true, as someone has said, that he does 
enough farming to spoil his preaching and enough preach- 
ing to spoil his farming. Let there be no low note 
sounded here. It is still true, and will always be true 
that in this country any man called of God to preach 
with average ability, average training, and average 
consecration, will get an average living out of the min- 
istry if he will give his whole time to it. It is also true, 
and will always be true, that God’s purpose in this 
matter is that the man who preaches the gospel shall 
live of the gospel. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 15 


But granting that many of our country pastors are 

wrong—are doing an injustice both to themselves and to 
the churches in trying to make it easy on the churches 
by making a living for themselves while they preach 
for little or nothing, the fact still obtains that: there 
is no class among us, at home or in the foreign fields, 
preaching the gospel at a greater sacrifice than the 
typical country preacher. Personally the author has 
never had any other calling—not even casually nor 
incidentally—but that of a preacher, and yet as he com- 
pares his life to that of a multitude of farmer-preachers 
he is conscious that in the vital matter of heart-con- 
secration and real sacrifice in order to preach many 
of these much berated farmer-preachers have him badly 
discounted. 
I wish all our country preachers would quit farming 
and “give themselves wholly to the ministry of the Word 
and prayer,” trusting God to keep his promise and 
provide a living for them. I believe they ought to do 
it, though many of them cannot be led to do it. But I 
wish here to record my sincere conviction that for heart 
consecration to and real sacrifice for the work of preach- 
ing, the typical country preacher is not surpassed by 
any of his brethren. 

5. Another high mark of the country preacher is his 
persistence in the face of discouragements, and open op- 
position. He reads in the county paper reports of the 
large Sunday school, the progressive young people’s or- 
ganization, and the active women’s societies in the 
church at the county site. He knows that all those 
things are good for the community and wishes his 
churches might have them. After long meditation he de- 
termines to lead his church or churches (usually four, 
often five, and sometimes six) into these various lines 


16 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


of worthy activity, and goes in for it with all his soul. 
But an unequipped building, bad roads, scattered peo- 
ple, small and inefficient membership in his church, and a 
more fatal lack of vision and leadership among them, 
or his own brief time on the field (usually two days 
out of each month) all conspire to make his effort a 
dismal failure. Petty neighborhood jealousies and petty 
denominational prejudices generate an opposition to his 
work, and often to him personally. But with a sublime 
purpose and faith and courage he plods on, doing the 
best he can with his scant equipment and his meagre op- 
portunity in spite of the indifference of friends and op- 
position of foes. His neighbor at the county site is 
occasionally heartened by the visit of some denomina- 
tional representative—an expert in some line of the 
work, but it is only once in a life-time that such a man 
can visit an open country church. The inspirational or 
deliberative conventions of his people meet. The church 
in the neighboring town raises the money and sends the 
pastor to these inspiring meetings. But the country 
church does not send her pastor, and the country pastor 
is unable to send himself. Thus the country pastor grinds 
on in his monotonous tread-mill without the inspiration 
of such gatherings. But thank God he does grind on. If 
it gets too hard in one church or group of churches, he 
will try another, but writing a spectacular magazine 
article on, “Why I Quit the Ministry,” never occurs to 
him. He is so thoroughly imbued with Paul’s “Woe is 
me if I preach not the gospel” that he never thinks of 
quitting. Obstacles may confront him, discouragements 
may envelope him, enemies may assail him, but his call 
to preach is so clear, and his conceptions of God’s chas- 
tisements for disobedience so vivid that he would as soon 
consider giving up his life as quitting the ministry. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 17 


6. Let us think next of his breadth in spite of narrow- 
ing environment. The average country preacher is broad 
without being flattened out till he is thin. The super- 
ficial talk that one denomination is just as good as 
another did not originate with, nor is it propagated by 
the country preacher of any denomination. But while 
he is an intense denominationalist he is not narrow. The 
individualistic atmosphere of the open country life leads 
him to stand “four square to every wind that blows” for 
his own rights, and makes him keen to propagate his 
own beliefs, but without a semblance of mental reserva- 
tion he accords that right to all others. He would fight 
as valiantly to guarantee it to them as to himself. 

But I speak of his breadth not simply in the matter of 
denominational adjustment but in the matter of his 
world vision. Confessedly there is that in the isolation 
and individualism of rural life that tends to a narrow- 
ness of view when the great world outside is involved. 
There is nothing in the nature of the situation to give his 
people a broad view when it comes to ministering to the 
great sick world outside of their own bounds. Of course, 
no farmer ever prayed, “God bless me and my wife, my 
son John and his wife; us four, and no more,” but farm- 
ing is not an occupation in itself conducive to world 
vision. The result is that the farmer is not inherently 
concerned to any marked degree with altruistic world 
movements. The country preacher lives in that atmos- 
phere. The natural tendency would be for him grad- 
ually to assume the somewhat provincial attitude of his 
people. It is not denied that all too many of them yield 
to that temptation, but as a rule we find him diligently 
tugging to pull his people up to a higher and a broader 
view. He has not traveled much, seldom out of his own 
county possibly, but in spite of all the narrowing in- 


18 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


fluences about him and the little “pent up Utica” in 
which he lives, there is something in his soul that re- 
sponds to the great world’s cry of need even to the re- 
motest islands of the sea. 

7. But a still further noble mark of the typical coun- 
try preacher is his heroic self-renunciation. The man 
who becomes a country preacher from choice deliberately 
dooms himself to the lowest level in the matter of salary, 
the back bench in religious conventions, and the hum- 
blest seat, if he gets any at all, in denominational 
councils. If the county site preacher gets a salary of 
from $2,000 to $5,000 a year, his perhaps equally capable 
country neighbor, ten miles away will be lucky if he 
gets a fourth as much. In my own state and denomina- 
tion the country preacher is three times as numerous as 
his town brother, often equals him in ability, and fre- 
quently surpasses him in loyalty, but in forty years 
he has had the privilege of preaching the annual Con- 
vention sermon, just one time, and that more than thirty 
years ago. 

The boards directing the various institutions of the 
Baptist General Convention of Texas are made up of 
about 200 names. In all these names there is not for 
1922 the name of even one man who is pastor of, or a 
member of an open country church. In the past twenty 
years 4,000 names have been selected by the Convention 
to fill these responsible positions. In all that time three 
country preachers have been chosen. 

Take the local association composed of messengers 
largely from country churches. How rarely is the 
preacher or layman living in the open country made 
moderator of his local association, or given any other 
special mark of confidence or badge of honor by that 
body of country people? In many respects his judg- 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 19 


ment is more dependable than that of his town brother, 
but he rarely sees service when positions of trust are 
being dispensed. 

This fact is not cited to record a complaint or emit 
a grouch, but simply to state the evident fact that 
when a man chooses the country pastorate as his life’s 
sphere of activity he deliberately turns his back on what- 
ever joy one may have in filling honorable places in de- 
nominational councils. As an evidence of the country 
preacher’s spirit of self-renunciation he has accepted this 
state of things without complaint. Perhaps the only 
reference to this matter that my reader ever saw in print 
is what he is reading now, and the fact is here cited, not 
by a country preacher, but by a theological professor, 
one who could not help being born with eyes. When 
denominational policies are to be outlined and denomi- 
national plans projected the country preacher is rarely 
called into the council chamber. Practically the only 
time when the trumpet is sounded for him is when his 
honored and trusted metropolitan brethren have per- 
fected a plan and all hands are needed to “Put it over.” 
This is not said to put a “dark brown taste” in the 
mouth of the country preacher, nor to incite him with 
the spirit of bolshevism (which thing I hate), but to put 
a deserved crown on his head for the loyalty with which 
he has stood to the guns, making possible every notable 
triumph of his people without a thought of its emolu- 
ments or its honors. He has done it in all the historic 
past. He will continue to do it in all the prophetic fu- 
ture. He is loyal not for earthly rewards, but for the 
crown of rejoicing which the righteous Judge shall give 
him in the last great day. 

8. Another vital thing about the country preacher 
is that without the demagogue’s affectation and self- 


20 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


seeking he is the sympathetic, appreciative, sincere, 
warm-hearted, apostle of the plain people. He knows their 
foibles, their frailties, their faults, and has the courage 
to rebuke them both publicly and privately and often 
has an almost uncanny shrewdness in correcting and re- 
forming them. He knows their problems and lends a 
brother’s skillful hand in solving them. He knows their 
troubles, their sorrows, their heartaches, and. knows how 
in a non-professional, but tactful way to assuage them. 
Without his miraculous power to raise the dead, the 
country preacher has been to many simple rural homes 
what Elisha was in the home of the Shunammite farmer, 
long ago. Multitudes of farmers have found that the 
wholesome influence of the sturdy preacher in the home 
has far outweighed the expense of building and main- 
taining a “prophet’s chamber” for him. 

But knighting him the apostle of the plain people must 
not lead to the erroneous conclusion that he is an agita- 
tor arraying the poor against the rich and fomenting 
strife between them. Now and then a city preacher loses 
his head and plays that role, but our brother of the 
country church is notably free from it. To him, “a 
man’s a man,” if he is a man, without reference to the ac- 
cident of wealth or poverty. 


CHAPTER II 


fie PRIMACY OB THE COUNTRY 
PASTORATE 


The preacher problem is the problem of our churches. 
If a church is fortunate enough to secure as its pastor 
a well-trained, well-balanced, unselfish, spirit-filled man 
all its other problems are easily solved. But if it se- 
cures a lop-sided, self-seeking, half-baked, ox-in-a-crock- 
ery-house preacher all its other problems are multi- 
plied and intensified. 

The church has a multitude of problems—the money 
problem, the meeting house problem, the young people 
problem, the social problem, the discipline problem and 
so on ad infinitum. But the one outstanding human 
problem of the church is the problem of its preacher— 
how to get him, how to maintain him, the attitude to 
assume toward him, how to keep him and sometimes 
(alas, alas!) how to get rid of him. 

Next to the presence and power of almighty God the 
preeminent need of every church is the right sort of 
man in the pulpit. With this need wisely supplied all 
other needs will be secured with comparative ease. But 
a failure here means the ultimate debacle of every good 
thing already acquired and a certain recession from 
every worthy goal already attained. 

If what we have been saying is true (and certainly 
no thoughtful person doubts it) two things ought to fol- 


[21] 


22 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


low as the night the day. (1) It should make a tre- 
mendous appeal to the preacher to be the right sort of 
man, challenging every chivalrous impulse to so qualify 
himself and so behave himself that his ministry will 
build and promote and not destroy or cripple the church 
to which he ministers. (2) It issues a clarion call to the 
church to be thoughtful and prayerful in the vital mat- 
ter of calling the preacher, and unselfish 4nd unprej- 
udiced in assuming the right attitude toward him once 
he is called. 

The prime importance of the country pastorate is 
shown in the first place by the fact that country churches 
need pastors more than others. For many reasons what 
has been said about the primacy of the preacher prob- 
lem is true of the smaller country churches even more 
than of the larger churches in town and city. In town 
and city churches the work will go on in some sort of 
fashion without a pastor, and in spite of an inefficient 
pastor. But if the country church has no pastor, or is 
handicapped with an inefficient pastor the work will 
languish and die. 

In the town or city the vacant church will be supplied 
by more or less efficient and acceptable visiting min- 
isters, and if it has a pastor inefficient in leadership this 
weakness will be re-enforced by a more or less capable 
local lay leadership. 

But as a rule, if a country church has no pastor it 
has no preaching. Moreover, if the country pastor is 
deficient in skill as a leader there is usually no one in 
the country church capable of supplementing him at 
this weak point. 

It therefore would seem that so far as it concerns 
human agencies the most important problem confronting 
us is the supplying of our country churches with steady, 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 23 


consecutive, trained, skilled pastoral leadership. No one 
can read the life of Frederick Oberlin and study his work 
with a group of almost hopeless rural churches in the 
Vosges Mountains without recognizing the inestimable 
value to a rural community of a trained consecrated 
preacher—one who is willing to give, against all odds, 
years of sacrificial, consecutive, persistent work to the 
task of combining and directing the scattered, discour- 
aged forces of a backward country community. 

But if one is thrilled as he reads the record of the 
transformation of these backward, backwoods communi- 
ties by the magic touch and quickening presence of a 
real man, it only serves to intensify his sense of depres- 
sion when he turns from that to see in our own fair 
land hundreds and even thousands of country churches 
and communities withering into inert desuetude and 
even noxious decay for the want of some such broad, 
capable, manly, consecrated, undivided, unselfish lead- 
ership. 

If you ask why the men who are pastors in these 
country neighborhoods do not transform them the an- 
swer is—they do not have a chance. With our inade- 
quate notions of what a country pastorate means, no 
man—not even Frederick Oberlin—could exercise any 
very vital, wholesome, permanent leadership in a church 
or community. A once-a-month pastorate, an absentee 
pastor, an annual call (resulting usually in an annual 
change and often in an annual church fuss) and a piti- 
ful burlesque in the matter of support, all conspire to 
make real constructive leadership an impossible thing. 
It cannot be denied that many among our country pas- 
tors, because of either a lack of ability or a lack of 
training, or both, are not capable of the highest type 
of leadership. But many of them are capable. They 


24 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


could do it, and would do it if they were not hopelessly 
handicapped by the tragic conditions in country church 
practice mentioned above. 

In my own thinking, there is nothing more important 
than that the noble men whom we recognize as Christian 
statesmen, and set out as religious leaders, should be giv- 
ing more thought to the matter of conserving the vi- 
tality and developing the virility of these rural commu- 
nities. The surest and shortest road to that worthy 
end is the road that leads to the right sort of pastors 
for the country church. 

Quoting, with a better motive I trust, the words of 
Absalom—‘“If I were a judge (a State Mission Secre- 
tary) I should charge one of my numerous assistants 
with the task of creating a more wholesome atmosphere 
and a saner policy in the matter of rural pastorates. In 
the South most of our country people are Baptists, and 
in Baptist churches the logical leader is the pastor. In 
view of these two facts I am sure, that if I were a Bap- 
tist State Mission Secretary I would give a great deal 
of time and thought and effort to the matter of working 
out some plan by which I could cooperate intelligently 
and efficiently with these country churches in securing 
for themselves the right sort of pastors, and in leading 
them to assume the right attitude to these pastors in the 
matter of providing them a reasonable financial support 
and furnishing them a reasonable equipment for doing 
their work. I would assign to a sane, rural-minded as- 
sistant the one business of looking out here and there a 
strategically located rural community where we could 
put on a demonstration of what would happen to a 
country church under the leadership of a full-time, cap- 
able pastor with some equipment in buildings, ete., for 
carrying on his work. If my worthy assistant found a 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER | 25 


church which was anxious to try it and he felt it was a 
place where a successful and profitable demonstration 
could be made, but the church was not able, or felt that 
it was not able, to bear the entire expense of it, I should 
try to lead my Board to a state of mind that would 
make them willing to supplement that church for a short 
time with an amount sufficient to make the experiment 
possible. I said ‘for a short time,’ for it will in most 
cases be a comparatively short time, till that church will 
discover itself and realize its ability to carry the work 
on unaided. A few such experiments scattered here and 
there over a State would by the sheer force of example 
tremendously quicken all the country churches. Dr. 
Gambrell had a way of saying ‘One demonstration is 
_ worth a thousand theories.’ One church like that in a 
county would give a new vision and a new purpose to 
every country church in the county. The one piece of 
leaven would soon leaven the whole lump. One such 
practical demonstration in a county would be worth 
more than the work of a dozen enlistment secretaries 
coming out from town with their startling statistics, 
their perfervid appeals and their untried theories.” 

Warren H. Wilson, the Rural Secretary of the Pres- 
byterian Church (U. 8. A.), has perhaps given more in- 
telligent, sympathetic, scientific study to the rural church 
problem than any other man living. He sees the impor- 
tance and practicability of the thing I am proposing, and 
is making some effort to put it into practice among his 
own people. 

The trouble with him, especially in the South, is that 
there are so few rural churches among Presbyterians. 
If he finds a desirable country Presbyterian church and 
puts on his demonstration, it is so remote from other 
Presbyterian churches that the power of it is lost. There 


26 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


are, to be sure, Baptist and Methodist churches nearby, 
but denominational lines prevent their seeing the value 
of the demonstration in its true light. Since, in the 
South, country people are mostly Baptist, it seems an 
axiom that if anybody is to do this thing the Baptists 
must do it. Dr. Hornbeak, so long Presbyterian Mis- 
sion Secretary in Texas, has been for a good many years 
saying to me in a semi-jocular way, “I want to make a 
speech to the Baptist General Convention of Texas on 
the subject: ‘Why Baptists are responsible for the reli- 
gious condition of country people in Texas.’’”’ He bases 
his argument, for one thing, upon the fact that Baptists 
have a larger following in the rural districts than all 
other denominations combined, and therefore have a 
greater responsibility. He probably would also say, and 
it is true whether he says it or not, that the genius both 
in doctrine and polity of a Baptist church appeals more 
than that of any other denomination to the conserva- 
tive, individualistic, democratic, independent rural mind. 
Any so-called Baptist leader is “dim-eyed and cannot 
see afar” if he does not realize that his biggest, most 
vital, most far-reaching task is that of quickening and 
developing country churches. He is a poor leader who 
makes up the map of his territorial activity according 
to railroad tracks. The open country is the source of 
religious denominational life and power, the town is but 
its outward sign and symbol; whatever happens at the 
source will sooner or later develop in the symptom. 
The Germans said, “Whatever you want to put into 
the empire put it in the schools.” Paraphrasing a little 
we would utter a sentiment equally true if we said, 
“Whatever you want to put into the country church put 
it in the preacher.” Certainly that statement would be 
measurably true concerning any church, but more decid- 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 27 


edly so of a country church. The reasons are obvious, 
and need not here be enumerated. 

2. But the primacy of the rural pastor may also be 
seen in the possibilities of his field. The distance between 
what the average country church is, and what it might 
become under efficient, consecutive full-time pastoral 
leadership is immeasurable. There is no group on earth 
more responsive to unselfish leadership than a country 
church. One who has never seen it tried can hardly con- 
ceive of the rapid growth a country community will make 
with a wise head to teach them, and a strong hand to 
guide them. Convince country people that the preach- 
er’s motives are religious and unselfish and they will 
follow him to the end of the road. In Louisiana there 
is a country church which, in 1922 had 24 members— 
a little one-room meeting house, fourth time preaching, 
for which they had never paid more than $25 per month. 
A year ago the church called as its pastor a live, vision- 
seeing man. At once moving onto the field he threw 
himself with undivided, unselfish ardor into the work of 
leading the church into nobler things, causing the peo- 
ple to see their vast and hitherto unsuspected powers 
and possibilities. In one year’s time the church has 
grown from a membership of 24 to 194. At an expense 
of $1,800 they have remodeled the one-room building 
into a modern church workshop with nine separate Sun- 
day-school rooms and with other good equipment for 
the best Sunday school, and for caring for the social life 
of the people. From no regular prayer meeting this ser- 
vice now has a weekly attendance of from 75 to 100. In- 
stead of $25.00 per month they are paying their pastor 
$150.00 per month. A complete revolution has come over 
both the church and the community. 


28 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


This case is cited (and there are others just as strik- 
ing) to illustrate the truth of my assertion that there is 
no place on earth like a country church for quick and 
gratifying response to capable, consecrated leadership. 
It goes to show that we ought to “give the more earnest 
heed” to the question of helping our country churches 
secure the right sort of pastoral leadership because of the 
tremendous latent possibilities of these fields, and be- 
cause of the large way in which they respond to such 
leadership. 

A few days ago I was talking with the superintendent 
of a Sunday school in a town of some 3,000 population. 
Thirty years ago that town was receiving from the State 
Mission Board a supplement to the pastor’s salary. It 
is receiving a larger supplement to-day, and has been 
thus supplemented practically every year for these thirty 
years. I am not questioning the wisdom of this supple- 
ment, but I am contending that an equal sum wisely ex- 
pended in a well-chosen, strategic country church would 
perhaps have resulted in the country church long ago 
coming to self-support, and becoming a shining illus- 
tration to other country churches of what a wise full- 
time pastorate could accomplish. 

3. But the primacy of the rural pastor lies in the fur- 
ther fact of the wide influence of his work. Out of these 
country churches will come ninety per cent of the preach- 
ers in the homeland and the missionaries to foreign 
fields. Forth from these country churches flows a con- 
stant stream of young men and women into towns and 
cities who are to become the leaders of every phase of 
life in these urban communities. Take from the life of 
our towns and cities the wholesome influence of country- 
bred men and women and you will have left a surpris- 
ingly small residuum of anything that is worth while. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 29 


The country neighborhood is the fountain that feeds 
the whole stream of civilization. How important then, 
that denominational leadership shall lay itself out to 
help these struggling country churches to secure and 
maintain the right sort of pastors. In view of the cry- 
ing need for the country pastor, and in view of his wide 
influence through those who go out from his field to every 
part of the earth, and in view of the wonderful opportu- 
nities he has for moulding these world-moving lives, it 
. seems to me beyond question that the country preacher 
is the most vital factor in our American civilization and 
in the future victories of the church of Jesus Christ. 

If the facts justify this conclusion then we cannot 
evade the corollary conviction that those charged with 
leadership in the field of religion, and especially those 
in executive positions owe it to their constituents to give 
to this question their best thought, that they may set 
up a definite policy that will bring practical results in 
this confessedly fruitful field. Many books have been 
written in the past ten years on rural problems. Those 
of us who, on account of our positions and the spheres 
of our influence, are largely more doctrinaires have had 
our say. We can do no more. We are mere teachers 
and have no machinery with which to put our carefully 
wrought plans into practical activity. If anything is 
to be done in the matter beyond mere theoretical dis- 
cussion it must be done by or through those charged with 
executive responsibility in the various denominations. 
Being, without apology, a Baptist, I yearn to see my own 
people take hold of this matter in a definite and deter- 
mined way. 

But since the country pastorate is of such prime im- 
portance, does it not seem that there ought to be every 
year groups of trained, capable young preachers, defi- 


30 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


nitely dedicating themselves to work in country fields? 
Is it not time that our bright successful rural pastors 
should cease to regard the country church as a mere sta- 
tion where they are to wait patiently for the call to a 
town church? It is all a mistake to suppose that a town 
church offers a better field of service than a country 
church. The town preacher’s influence may, and doubt- 
less will be more extensive, but it is almost certain to be 
less intensive. He will touch more people but he will not 
touch any of them so vitally. While the town preacher is 
touching character here and there with his finger tips, 
the country preacher has character in his hands mould- 
ing it. He is a superficial observer who does not see that 
while a town or city pastorate gives a field of wider 
scope, the country pastorate has the tremendous triple 
advantage of a more immediate response on the part of 
his people, a more permanent impression made upon 
them, and a more far-reaching influence, both as to ter- 
ritory and time, going out from them. 


CHAPTER III 


SOME BSSENTIALS TO. AN 
FREFECTIVE RURAL 
MINISTRY* 


A successful business man, who left the country neigh- 
borhood thirty years ago and made a fortune in the 
city, seeing the title of Dr. Bickler’s book, “Solving the 
Country Church Problem,” said: ‘There are no country 
church problems; all the problems are in the town 
churches.” He is a type of many long-range observers 
and superficial thinkers on this subject. Sentimentalists 
have idealized “The Little Brown Church in the Wild- 
wood” till many have supposed it to be an elysian field 
of peace, piety and spiritual power. Many who are writ- 
ing on country church problems are discussing an ideal- 
ized memory and not a stubborn fact. They are talking 
about the country church as they now think it appeared 
to a boy thirty or forty years ago. They know little, 
either from experience or first-hand observation, about 
the complex and perplexing problems of new twentieth 
century social, economic and educational conditions with 
which all our country churches are wrestling, and by 
which many of them are being put out of commission. 
Still thinking of it in the simplicity of its pioneer life 
they cannot realize the utter unpreparedness of the aver- 
age country church to cope with its new problems. They 





*In this chapter the author has made some rather liberal ex- 
cerpts from his recent book ‘“‘The Highest Office. 


[31] 


32 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


know only in a vague general way, if they know at all, 
that the twentieth century has brought to the country 
church a new Sunday-school problem, a new meeting 
/ house problem, a new transportation problem, a new so- 
cial life problem, a new co-ordination and centralization 
problem, a new financial problem, a new Sabbath obser- 
vance problem, a new public school problem, a new agri- 
cultural problem, and so on down the line. Because blind- 
ness in part has happened to them they think that all the 
country preacher needs to do is to preach the gospel 
(‘“‘gawspell,”’ some of them call it), make himself agree- 
able to the people and pass all these problems up to 
Cesar for settlement. If the country church does not 
concern itself with these questions so vital to country 
life, it will soon find that country life does not concern 
itself with the church. Good leadership is the one es- 
sential human element in the solution of these problems. 
But leadership is itself the gravest problem confront- 
ing the country church. Leadership cannot solve other 
problems so long as it is itself an unsolved problem. 

Far more than the average man realizes the economic, 
political, educational, social, moral and spiritual future 
’ of our country depends upon the country preacher. The 
fact makes an imperious demand that we give the most 
earnest heed to the type of men who fill our rural pas- 
torates. 

In this chapter I wish to suggest briefly some of the 
things that seem to me essential to an effective rural 
ministry. To begin with, some things ought to be said 
about 


Tur Man HIMSELF 


In the first place, then, the very nature of his task will 
require an exceptionally strong and vigorous body. In 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 33 


any pastorate the physical weakling is sadly handi- 
capped, but most of all the rural pastor. A scattered 
congregation, bad roads and rigorous weather will make 
proper pastoral work difficult, if not impossible, for any 
but the man of strong physical constitution. Besides 
this, the rural pastor, more than his city colleague, 
will find it to his advantage if he is able to match 
strength with his vigorous neighbor in manly sports. 
Physical prowess commands a higher premium among 
rural than among urban people, and anything that will 
elicit the respect of his neighbors is of value to the 
preacher. 

But in the second place the present day does, and 
the future will, more and more demand that the country 
preacher shall be an educated man. Pastoral lead- 
ership in the country church is often sadly handicapped 
because the preacher is so poorly educated. The preacher 
must be educated if he is to be the capable leader of a 
free and intelligent people. Every school house adds one 
more argument for the necessity of an educated min- 
istry. Every patriotic man rejoices in the efforts which 
the States of the South are making in educational mat- 
ters. By generous appropriations from state treasuries 
“the little red school house” is springing up everywhere 
and state universities for broad culture, and state col- 
leges for specific professional training are in easy reach 
of the masses. Add to this the many private schools 
and the multitude of denominational schools of all grades 
and it is easy to see how the general average of intelli- 
gence is far higher than it was fifty years ago. The 
thoughtful man must at once conclude that if the 
preacher is to fulfil his God-appointed mission to this 
better educated people he must himself be better edu- 
cated. Dr. Boyce was right when he contended fifty 


34 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


years ago for a better educated ministry, but if there 
was one reason for it fifty years ago, there are ten 
reasons for it now. But there is another reason for 
training among country preachers. I refer to the change 
in the character of our population, and especially our 
country population. Fifty years ago the rural popu- 
lation of the South was homogeneous. Our people had 
in a large degree the same traditions, the same early 
training, the same ambitions, the same language, the 
same ideals socially, politically and religiously. But 
to-day, particularly in the Southwest, our rural popu- 
lation is made up of people with traditions, ambitions, 
languages and ideals imported from every quarter of the 
globe—as widely divergent in intellectual, political and 
moral thinking as in geographical origin. Fifty years ago 
it required the maximum of skill on the part of the 
preacher to be a leader of the homogeneous rural popu- 
lation of the South. To-day the preacher who is to fill the 
God-appointed sphere of spiritual leader must be 
equipped with the best possible training to meet and 
overcome the multitude of divergent, crude and heret- 
ical notions that have been imported from everywhere. 
Every new consolidated school and every farmer’s son or 
daughter going to college make a new demand that 
our rural preachers shall be educated men. I stand 
with uncovered head in the presence of the mighty work 
done by uneducated country preachers in the romantic 
history of our country, but we may all well realize that 
we have come to a new day. The constantly increasing 
intelligence of our rural population due to the telephone, 
the automobile, the good roads, the rural free delivery of 
mail, the consolidated school and the easy access to col- 
lege all conspire to make it practically impossible for the 
uneducated preacher to exercise his function of leader 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 35 


to a rural people. An educated rural pastorate has 
always been a thing much to be desired. It is fast 
becoming, if it has not already become, a thing ab- 
solutely essential to his even approximately effective 
service. 

For a third thing, the preacher who is to successfully 
lead our country churches must be a man unquestion- 
ably orthodox in his doctrinal teaching. Personally I 
think this is a consummation devoutly to be wished 
in every preacher. But since the country church gives 
more thought and attention to such things than the 
busy, religiously superficial city church, it follows that 
the country preacher who develops a flaw at this point 
will find his power of leadership more speedily and 
hopelessly discounted than will his brother of the city 
church. As a rule it is psychologically impossible for a 
preacher to lead a country church in any worthy un- 
dertaking, if there is the slightest suspicion attaching 
to his loyalty to what we call the fundamentals of the 
faith. A preacher with a taint in his orthodoxy may be 
able to lead a city church in certain lines of worthy 
achievement, but in a country church he is a hopeless 
failure. A city congregation may be too busy to see 
such things, or too religiously superficial to care, but 
the country church, more thoughtful and possibly more 
conscientious, will see it and will care. It therefore mat- 
ters not what noble things such a pastor proposes, the 
people will not follow. 

While it is true that the twentieth century effective 
country preacher must be a progressive man in his 
ideas, his ideals and his program, his progressiveness 
must be marked by a sane conservatism. 

More than his neighbor in the city, the country pastor 
with progressive programs clamoring everywhere in his 


36 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


sray matter must learn to labor and to wait. His 
progressive spirit must be so seasoned with genuine con- 
servatism as to save him from the folly of putting over 
half-baked programs, or planting perfect plans in un- 
prepared soil. The country community is inherently 
ultra-conservative, and no hare-brained, impulsive, im- 
patient, get-there-quick preacher will be able to lead it. 
Whoever would be an effective pastoral leader in a 
country community must learn the meaning of the scrip- 
ture phrase, “Line upon line, precept upon precept, here 
a little and there a little.’ Many, if not most of our 
progressive country church programs have failed because 
the preacher had not thoroughly learned this lesson. 
There may be an Aladdin’s lamp for the sudden achieve- 
ment of some things, but there is none for the making 
of a progressive country church. 

While agreeing with you that the highest essentials 
for every preacher are his moral and spiritual equip- 
ment, I shall not discuss them here since they belong to 
all preachers alike, and my -task is to discuss specifically 
some qualities peculiar to an effective rural ministry. 

Now, let us turn from the man himself as an essen- 
tial element in an effective rural pastorate and show 
that a second general essential is his right 


ATTITUDE To His Task 


The man who is to do any effective work as a country 
pastor must thoroughly believe in its tremendous im- 
portance, and its essential dignity. No man who be- 
littles his task by speaking of himself or thinking of 
himself as “just a country preacher” will do a really 
effective work in a country church. Unless he has the 
eye to see the tremendous potentialities of his country 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 37 


field his ministry is robbed of its romance and there- 
fore of its power. Without the power to see the angel 
in the rough stone, giving nerve and inspiration to his 
heart, his ministry is necessarily “stale, flat and unprofit- 
able.” 3 

The average country pastor is a man of genuine piety, 
sincere purpose, unquestioned doctrinal orthodoxy and 
notably sacrificial life. The trouble with many, if not 
most of them, is that they are restless and dissatis- 
fied because they have not eyes to see the thrilling 
possibilities of a country pastorate. The average country 
preacher sees in his pastorate a group of commonplace 
farmers and their more commonplace children, not realiz- 
ing that out of these apparently commonplace groups 
are to come ninety per cent of the men and women 
who are to be the leaders in shaping the world’s thinking 
and activity. Nor does he seem to see that more than 
any man in the world the country pastor has a chance 
to mould the lives of the young people coming under 
his influence. Because of its intensiveness the influence 
of a country preacher with one hundred in his church is 
greater in the matter of character building than that of 
the town preacher with a thousand. A pioneer preacher 
passed a boy splitting rails in an open forest, and did 
not uncover his head because he could not foresee Abra- 
ham Lincoln. A preacher met a boy riding barebacked a 
“sotched-eared” old mare taking a sack of corn to the 
pioneer mill to get meal for the family the coming week, 
and had no thrill because he could not realize the pos- 
sibilities of Henry Clay. A rural preacher passed the 
log cabin in East Texas where lived the Lovett family 
and saw a boy nailing a coon skin to the outer wall of 
the cabin. He said, “Howdy, Bobby,” and rode on, 
not knowing that he had greeted the future president 


38 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


of the Union Pacific Railroad. So every country preacher 
has had the opportunity of touching the life of some 
“mute inglorious Milton” whose life and character he 
may shape for conquest in the world’s big tasks. 

But once more, he must not only believe in his work, 
but he must love it. No man can be the most effective 
country pastor who, other things being equal, would 
rather live in town than in the country. Paul, city- 
bred, loving the city, and thinking and talking in city 
terms, could not have done his best in a country church, 
and the rural-minded John the Baptist, had he lived, 
would have been a misfit as pastor of the First Church at 
Jerusalem. Conscience, or circumstances, sometimes im- 
pels a country-loving preacher into a city pastorate, and 
vice versa, but it goes without saying that, by and 
large, a preacher will do the best work in an environ- 
ment and an atmosphere that he loves. 

If the country preacher’s heart is not loyal to rural 
interests he cannot succeed though he have the tongue 
of men and of angels. If he does not love country peo- 
ple and cannot fall easily and joyfully into their domestic 
and social customs he cannot lead them. If cows and 
pigs and birds and bees and fresh ploughed land and 
growing crops and deep woods and running streams and 
the rattle of the farm wagon on the rocky road and 
the meadow’s fragrant breath do not fascinate him he 
ought to move back to town. He can never lead a rural- 
minded people. And he is constitutionally unfitted for 
rural leadership if he is unwilling to live in the country 
where his work is. He may get along fairly well against 
the handicap of living in town if the conditions make it 
necessary. But the rural pastor who lives in town be- 
cause he does not like to live in the country is a failure 
by inherent maladjustment. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 39 


CONSECRATION TO His Task 


A third general essential quality of an effective rural 
minister is the whole-hearted consecration which he is 
willing, or perhaps I ought to say able to give to his 
work. The typical fourth-time pastorate, so common 
among our country churches, is an infallible preventive of 
a successful ministry. It is true that our present ten- 
dency to organize a weak little church in the corner of 
every man’s field makes a situation where the church 
cannot support a full-time pastor, and also makes a sit- 
uation too limited in membership and circumscribed in 
field to appeal to a big-brained man as a place where he 
can contentedly put in all his time. In the matter of 
the consolidated rural schools, are not the children of 
this world setting a good example to the children of 
light? Whether from the standpoint of principle or of 
policy, I take no stock in the idea of amalgamating all 
the denominations of a given community into one creed- 
less, and, therefore, spineless, and, therefore, useless fed- 
erated or union church. Such a course seems to me 
wrong in principle and impracticable in policy. I think 
the experiments tried along this line have led outstanding 
students of this question, notably Dr. Warren H. Wilson, 
to take the same view. But where there are three or 
four churches of the same denomination within three or 
four miles of a consolidated school, all of them within 
the territory that feeds that school, it would seem to be 
both right and practicable for these little churches to 
disband and form one strong church at the community 
center, thus giving financial strength to support a full- 
time pastor and to secure reasonable equipment for the 
work of a twentieth century church, and at the same 


40 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


time afford a constituency numerous enough to appeal to 
a capable, wide-awake man. 

But the most effective rural ministry not only de- 
mands a full-time pastorate, that is, one that has its 
preacher every Sunday; it also demands that this every- 
Sunday preacher should live on the field. He may be 
a preacher, but he cannot be a pastor otherwise. I have 
in mind a little community with three church organiza- 
tions, each having preaching once a month. One pastor 
(so called by courtesy) lives thirty miles east; one forty 
miles south, and the third a hundred miles north. Funer- 
als and marriages are conducted—often butchered—by 
some secularizing local preacher. The sick know almost 
nothing of the comfort of a pastoral visit. The way- 
ward go from bad to worse for want of the restraining 
touch of a wise pastor. Petty neighborhood bickerings 
develop feuds which could have been healed in their 
incipiency under the influence of a faithful pastor. Mor- 
monism and Russellism send in their emissaries and 
many fall victims to these errors who could have been 
saved with a capable pastor in the field. The further 
tragedy is that these ministers are usually mere figure- 
heads in the communities where they live. When will 
our people learn that a flock of sheep needs a Shepherd 
more than two days out of a month? 

A fourth thing that ought to be said is that the ef- 
fective rural pastorate not only calls for full-time preach- 
ing and full-time on the field, but it demands full- 
time on the job. Often to speak of a church that has 
preaching every Sunday, and the preacher on the field 
as a full-time pastorate is a misnomer, because in many 
—surprisingly many, alarmingly many—cases_ the 
preacher is not on his real job half the time. Many 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 41 


preachers known to me do not work at anything half 
the time, and among those who are apparently busy in 
pastoral activity, many are frittering away their time 
on little, meaningless inconsequentialities, too trifling to 
appeal to a man with the consciousness of a big job on 
his hands. I have been a close observer of church life 
for fifty years, and I can truthfully say that I never 
knew a preacher, however meager his gifts, who worked, 
and worked all the time, and worked all the time on his 
job, who did not succeed, and I never knew one of the 
other sort who did. Whatever may be said about the 
enduement of the Holy Spirit for power in service, and 
nobody believes the doctrine more than I do, I cannot 
help believing that God despises and utterly rejects the 
man who undertakes to offer that blessed gift as a sub- 
stitute for hard work. In the ministry, as elsewhere, 
genius is at yon end of hard work. It will perhaps do no 
good to say it here, and possibly do no good to say it 
anywhere, but my observation is that most of our coun- 
try preachers, though active and industrious men, are 
working very little at the real job of growing a Christ- 
honoring, soul-saving, character-building, community- 
moulding New Testament church. If any man says the 
same thing is true of the average city pastor he will pro- 
voke no controversy with me. The tragedy of nine- 
tenths of our rural pastorates is that due to crude, un- 
scientific and unscriptural practices in the matter of 
pastoral relation and support, the preacher must give 
much of his time to some secular work to keep the wolf 
from his door. In most cases the fault lies on both sides. 
If the country pastor would live among his people and as 
his people, he could live quite as comfortably on one- 
third of what it takes to support him in town. On the 


42 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


other side, if the members of any average country church 
would adopt the sensible, practical and, so far as I see, 
scriptural plan of paying a tithe to the support of the 
church, it would provide a fund easily sufficient to make 
it possible for the pastor to give his undivided time to the 
moral and spiritual interests of the community. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE RURAL CHURCH OUTLOOK 


A careful and sympathetic study of the country church 
situation produces mingled feelings of joy and sadness, 
pride and shame, hope and despair. Viewed from one 
standpoint the situation seems good, conditions improv- 
ing and the outlook hopeful, but viewed from another 
set of phenomena the picture is gars and the atmos- 

phere depressing. 

It would be crass egotism if I, a superficial student 
with very limited data, should speak with any claim 
of expert knowledge on a subject so complicated and so 
beset with apparently conflicting currents. I shall in 
this chapter, mention three sets of facts that seem to 
bear on the subject, being content that each man 
draw his own conclusions from the facts presented. I 
shall present (1) Some conditions that are clearly dis- 
couraging. (2) Some that might be made assets, but 
have really become liabilities. (3) Some that are unmis- 
takably encouraging. 


I. Some Conpitions THat ARE CLEARLY DISCOURAGING 


1. The difficulty of securing, maintaining and retaining 
on the rural field a trained, efficient, acceptable ministry. 
There is a very general expectation that when a young 
man finishes his education and shows some signs of pas- 
toral efficiency, he will leave the rural for a town or city 

[43] 


44 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


pastorate. The average trained, efficient rural pastor re- 
gards his country pastorate as a station where he some- 
what impatiently awaits a call to a town church, and the 
sad feature of it is that the average rural church, with 
fatal self-depreciation and ruinous self-abasement, so re- 
gards itself. The result is that in many cases country 
churches are either experiment stations for school boys in 
training or hospitals for once successful, but now broken 
down old preachers or arenas, where ignorant and ineffi- 
cient men are permitted to “exercise in public,” with little 
hope of getting anywhere or accomplishing anything. 
There are not only those who do not expect the country 
church to have an educated preacher, but there are 
actually those who are obsessed with the erroneous belief 
that the habit of speaking good English disqualifies a 
man for a country pastorate. The absence of trained, 
efficient pastoral leadership and our indifference to it pre- 
sents a most discouraging outlook for the future of the 
country church. 

2. Another discouraging outlook is the decadence of 
spiritual singing in country congregations. There was a 
time when country churches had vigorous congregational 
singing while city and town churches had their singing 
furnished to them ready made by a choir. To-day the 
thing is reversed. As a rule more people will be found 
Singing in city than in country churches. Not only is 
there a decrease in the number of people singing, but 
there is an appalling degeneration in the type of songs 
they are singing, and this degeneration is both in the 
melody and in the words. Little two-step tunes set to 
silly substitutes for poetry led by an animated jumping 
jack offer very meagre encouragement for sane peo- 
ple to worship God in song. Denmark literally sang her- 
self in two generations from a state of tragic national 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 45 


decay into a triumphant successful community life by 
getting all her people in every public assembly to sing 
noble patriotic and religious songs. Had our people 
been taught to sing our great national hymns we should 
have had, at the beginning of the World War, no oc- 
casion to coin the word “slacker.” Has some wise man 
already said, “Let me write a nation’s songs and I care 
not who writes her laws’? If not, let me say it now. 
If rural churches are to do their best the quality of their 
songs must be improved and the number of people sing- 
ing increased. } 

A third discouraging element is speculation in farm 
lands, resulting in the retired farmer, the absentee land- 
lord, the tenant and the hired man. We may as well 
make up our minds that in rural life even approximately 
ideal conditions will never be reached while land specu- 
lation exists. At every war council old Cato monoto- 
nously reiterated his contention, “Carthage must be de- 
stroyed!’”’ So at every session of our legislature there 
ought to be an apostle of rural life to thunder into legis- 
lative ears the doctrine, “Land speculation must be 
abolished.” We may do many things to palliate it and 
modify it but we will never touch the real seat of this 
disease until we can get such land laws as will make it 
easy, or at least practicable, for the man who lives on the 
land to own it, and laws that will bring about such 
conditions that the man who is not willing to live on the 
land and use it cannot afford to own it. 

My own opinion is that a graduated land tax such as 
the bill offered in a recent Texas legislature, would 
greatly help this situation. This was a bill proposing to 
tax the landowner in proportion to the value of land in 
his possession. The object was so to increase the tax on 
large land holdings that no man could afford to hold 


46 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


large bodies of land for speculative purposes. Had this 
bill received from our general citizenship the attention 
and study which its importance gave its proponents a 
right to expect I believe there would have been such a 
popular demand for it that it would now be a law instead 
of wiggling its pink toes in a legislative scrap heap. 
Some such legislation will doubtless be proposed in 
coming sessions of the legislatures of the various states. 
Now that this vital question has arisen it will never 
sit down till it is settled, and it will never be settled till 
it is settled right, and it will never be settled right till 
some laws are passed making it impossible for selfish 
plutocrats, whether individuals or corporations, to so 
monopolize land, that they can fix prices and terms that 
make home ownership impracticable if not impossible 
for a large majority of the people who live on the land 
and eke out a pitiful existence from it. 

If a man wants a big tract of land on which he will 
not live and which he cannot personally use, let him pay 
a big tax for the luxury. If he can content himself with 
a piece of land just as large as he can personally use and 
on which he is willing to live, let him own it at a nominal 
tax. All economists argue that home ownership is an 
essential element of the best citizenship. No legislation 
would contribute as much to home ownership as a law 
establishing a sane, fair, non-oppressive, graduated land 
tax. 

This is perhaps not the place to discuss it, but the 
truth is all state revenues ought to be derived from just 
two things—land and incomes, and the tax should be 
graduated according to the amount and value of the land 
and the size of the income. Certainly there would arise 
under such a law complications that would be difficult to 
adjust, but what could be more complicated than our 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 47 


present obsolete, inadequate, unsatisfactory, unequal and 
almost impossible tax system. When I say that state 
revenues should be derived from a tax on land and in- 
comes the tradition-bound, political high-brow shakes his 
sapient head and sagely mutters: “political heresy.” And 
he is right. To-day it is political heresy, but in fifty 
years or less it will be recognized as sound political 
economy. My plea is that every preacher and every 
altruistic layman shall study this question and be pre- 
pared to take an intelligent position on it whenever it 
comes up. Let every man as he approaches the dis- 
cussion of it be sure that he is not biased by prejudice 
nor hampered by tradition, nor shackled by selfishness. 
You may write it down as an axiom that if we are ever 
to have a rural population of prosperous, happy home- 
owners, we must have some form of legislation that will 
remove the lure of land speculation. Why do absentee 
landlords continue to hold large bodies of land? In 
normal times the rent does not amount to four per cent 
on the investment. Why then do they hold it? For 
speculation pure and simple. They do not expect their 
profits by raising crops on the land. They expect their 
profit by raising prices on the land. I am making no 
fight on the landlord. But if my investigation in rural 
life has taught me anything it has taught me that our 
noble rural population will never attain to its highest 
possibilities while land speculation stands between the 
industrious farmer and home ownership. Your knowl- 
edge of human nature teaches you that this confessedly 
hurtful speculation in land will never cease till laws are 
passed that will make it unprofitable. 

We are all clamoring now for laws that will prevent the 
holding of farm products for speculative purposes. Why 


48 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


not go back to the fountain head and apply that rule to 
the land that produces these products? 

The fourth discouraging element I mention is the mul- 
tiplicity of little weak churches of the same denomina- 
tion. The evil of the multiplicity of different denomina- 
tions is found more in villages and larger towns than in 
the open country. In the South country churches are 
as a rule either Methodist or Baptist, so they are not 
as yet troubled much with the competition of different 
denominations. The country church problem at this point 
is that churches of the same denomination are put into 
ruinous competition with themselves. Drive down a 
stake at many given points in Texas, describe a circle 
with a three-mile radius, and you include four little 
churches of the same denomination, all of them so weak 
they could not hail a bread wagon, and so anemic they 
could not cast a shadow. They each have a different 
man for pastor, who comes once a month, traveling any- 
where from fifty to one hundred, miles to fill his appoint- 
ment, receiving little, if any, more than enough pay to 
cover his traveling expenses and rendering practically 
no other service than filling his two preaching appoint- 
ments on Sunday, and as one would expect under such 
conditions it is usually a “poor preach.” These churches 
are worshiping in unsightly little shacks or perhaps rural 
school buildings, their congregations are so small as to 
destroy or prevent enthusiasm and they are too weak to 
run a Sunday school or render any vital service to the 
community. Why could not these four churches of the 
same denomination come together at a central point, or- 
ganize one church out of the four, build a meeting house, 
get five acres of land nearby with house for pastor’s 
home and locate a preacher in their midst for full time? 
Or if individualistic preference or prejudice is so strong 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 49 


that they cannot come together in one organization, why 
can they not at least all call the same preacher, locate 
him in their midst, let him preach once a month at each 
place and act as pastor for the whole situation? 

A fifth discouragement is a worn-out, slip-shod, inade- 
quate method of taking care of the finances of the rural 
church. It would perhaps more accurately describe a 
large per cent of our country churches if I had said the 
utter lack of any method of providing for their financial 
obligations. The result is that many of them owe money 
that they never expect to pay. Practically all of this is 
owed to former pastors. About all the average country 
pastor can be sure of concerning his salary is that part 
of it he will never get. This does not imply that the 
individuals composing these churches are personally dis- 
honest. As a rule the rural church member is scrupu- 
lously straight in the matter of personal integrity. But 
he is a rank individualist and cannot see his personal 
responsibility for the obligations of his church. The 
pastor was called and promised a definite amount. This 
individualistic brother pays what he thinks is his share 
of that amount and straightway concludes that he has 
no further responsibility about the pastor’s salary. The 
absence of business methods of taking care of church 
finances is everywhere noticeable and lamentable, but the 
weakness is strongest in country churches. If a prophet 
should be raised up who could lead our country churches 
to even approximately good financial system we might 
well call him blessed. Till such prophet arises our 
country churches will droop and languish. 

The adoption of a sane, well-rounded, sufficiently 
elastic budget system directed, illuminated and kept 
aglow by a capable, conscientious, industrious pastor 
would work a miracle of increased activity, virility, 


50 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


spirituality and general efficiency among our country 
churches. Like Diogenes, I am looking fora man. The 
man I am looking for and praying for is one who shall 
prepare a plan and lead a movement that shall utilize 
the unmeasured financial strength of our multitudinous 
country churches. 

This leads us to a consideration of the pitifully, and 
almost universally small salaries paid our country 
preachers. But there is something to be said here in 
defense of the country church. The average country 
preacher is with his people two days out of a month or 
24 days out of a year. Throw in six days for the summer 
meeting and he is on the field one month out of a year. 
The thoughtful old farmer is going to think, even if he 
does not say it, that the pastor who gets $150.00 for 30 
days’ time is pretty well paid. The average farmer can’t 
make enough money on the farm to maintain his family 
in town where everything must be bought, and he feels 
that he ought not to be asked to do for his preacher what 
he is unable to do for his own family. If the country 
pastor would be willing to live among his people and as 
his people, where he could have his cow and his pigs 
and his chickens and his truck patch, he could cut the 
expense of living 50 per cent. If we can ever get enough 
thoroughly equipped rural-minded preachers willing 
to do that thing we will have hundreds of full-time 
country churches. So our difficulty here lies not merely 
in the small salaries country churches pay, but in the 
fact that country pastors are not willing to adapt them- 
selves to conditions that will make it possible for them 
to live comfortably on the salary the country church 
would pay whole-hearted pastoral service with full-time 
on the field. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 51 


In another chapter of this volume I have given it as 
my deliberate conviction that among my own people 
here in Texas for example our State Mission Board 
ought to set aside at least $5,000 a year for the next 
ten years with which to supplement a dozen strategically 
located country churches so that they might maintain a 
well-trained, rural-minded pastor for full time on the 
field. From the standpoint of immediate, local and 
available results the investment would pay far better 
than much of the money we are now investing in notably 
case-hardened towns which have been so long addicted to 
the board-riding habit that it has become second nature. 
But I do not advocate it primarily for immediately avail- 
able results, but as a demonstration to other churches 
with a full time pastorate, filled by a well-equipped and 
adequately paid man. This is said not from the stand- 
point of a rural church enthusiast. It seems to me, and I 
hope it seems to you, to be well-balanced, denomina- 
tional statesmanship. If we do not give more specific, 
intelligent and sustained attention to the development 
of our country churches, the stream of denominational 
life and power will go dry at its fountain. 


Il. Some Tuincs TuHat Micut Be Maps ASSETS BUT 
Have Reauty Become LIABILITIES 


The first to be mentioned is good roads and the auto- 
mobile. A few years ago a few of us hoped that we saw 
in these modern improvements the salvation of the 
country churches. We argued that since church going 
would be made easier and the consolidation of weak 
churches made practicable the rural churches would be 
greatly benefited. But the facts have not justified the 
hope. The automobile and good roads have served to 


Ans 


52 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


take people from rather than to the country church. 
We are all for the automobile and good roads, but if our 
rural churches are not to be hurt by them, we must 
find some way to prevent their destroying the solidarity 
of the local community. In former times of more dif- 
ficult transportation every man was available for the 
local interests of the community and on Sunday attended 
and helped to build the local church, thus at least pre- 
serving the solidarity of the country community. Now 
the automobile owner is under constant temptation to 
become a sort of religious free lance—a spiritual gad- 
about, sipping honey, as his whim, or the whim ‘of his 
family may dictate, from any community within a radius 
of forty miles. Out of it grows the tendency to dissi- 
pate what had been the constructive force of the com- 
munity. In this dissipation of the units of influence the 
country church suffers first and perhaps most. 

Another thing that some of us thought would help 
but which looks as if it will really hurt the country church 
is improved farming and higher prices for farm products. 
We have been saying that a good country church cannot 
be maintained without successful farming. And that is 
the truth. But until we can get adjusted to it or pass 
some laws controlling it, the new prosperity that has 
come to our farmers brings a menace to both our country 
churches and our country schools, and in fact to all the 
interests of the rural community. Take for example a 
community where these absentee landlords own three- 
fourths of the tillable land. Heretofore they have been 
satisfied to rent this land to trustworthy men with fami- 
lies for “third and fourth.” ‘These families were reason- 
ably permanent assets in community life. They fur- 
nished children for the school and they and their families 
furnished constituency and material support for. the 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 53 


churches. But improved farm machinery and higher 
prices have made it more profitable to cultivate the land 
with hired labor. So the tenant and his family are dis- 
placed by the hired man, usually a Negro or a Mexican. 
Just the other day one of these landlords said to me, 
“Why should I rent my land for a fourth of the cotton 
when I can make the crop with hired labor for a fourth 
of it and get for myself the three-fourths that the tenant 
has been getting?” Under our generally recognized 
business principles of “get all you can and keep all you 
get,” nobody can blame the landlord for doing what he 
will with his own. But when you destroy three-fourths 
of the homes in the community and replace them with 
irresponsible, undesirable and often disreputable hired 
men, you ruin that community commercially, intel- 
lectually, socially, spiritually, and I seriously question 
any man’s moral right to do that even if plutocratic 
land laws do give him the legal right to do it. A re- 
liable business man in a small North Texas town told me 
recently that within the trade territory of that town 
at least one hundred and fifty tenants had received 
notice to vacate as the landlord would cultivate the land 
next year with hired labor. By our unscientific and non- 
altruistic land laws we put into the hands of two or 
three landlords the Ithuriel’s spear by which a happy, 
prosperous, blossoming, fructifying community may be 
transformed into a mere shekel-producing desert. We 
have made for ourselves the anomalous condition in 
which the more a rural community succeeds the worse 
off it is. 

A still further menace in the blessing of progress is 
that with the new farm machinery, the number of men 
needed to do the work on the farm is being steadily de- 
creased, thus hurting the country church by reducing its 


54 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


constituency. This fact is further intensified by the ad- 
ditional fact that whereas in former times much of the 
machinery and equipment used on the farm were made 
on the farm itself, they are now made in the cities, 
thus still further depleting the rural population. In short, 
every invention and improvement that decreases the 
number of men necessary to do the work on the farm 
weakens the rural church by decreasing the number of 
those directly interested in its maintenance. 

Now no sane person laments these improvements in 
labor-saving machinery, but while rejoicing in them 
every thoughtful man must see that if we are to 
maintain our rural church life we must find some way 
to counteract the menace necessarily implied in the new 
rural industrial and economic adjustments we are facing. 
Doubtless these inventions and improvements will help 
rural life more than they will hurt it, but thoughtful men 
will see the necessity of adapting the one to the other 
so as to reduce the hurt to the minimum and raise the 
help to the maximum. 

But let us now spend a moment considering 


III. Some ConpitTions CLEARLY ENCOURAGING. 


1. Better living conditions. No one can compare the 
many comforts of present-day rural life with the hard- 
ships of thirty years ago without feeling that the out- 
look for every rural institution is greatly improved. 
Daily mail, the telephone, better roads, better water 
supply for domestic purposes, better houses, better stock, 
better clothing, better food, better traveling facilities all 
conspire to make the outlook for the country church 
glorious. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 55 


2. Better social conditions. Thirty years ago drunk- 
enness, gambling, and promiscuous profanity were com- 
mon in country neighborhoods. ‘To-day they are un- 
common and those indulging in them are consciously 
discounted if not entirely tabooed in social circles. This 
condition has been brought about largely by the country 
preacher and makes a congenial atmosphere for future 
growth. 

3. Better intellectual conditions, better schools, more 
generally educated people and a better trained ministry 
all make a hopeful outlook for the country church. 

4. A revival in the study of rural conditions. Con- 
current with, and even antedating Mr. Roosevelt’s Com- 
mission for the study of rural conditions, there has been 
a new interest in country life. The large appropriations 
by the Federal Government, by the various states and by 
counties for the maintenance of farm demonstration work 
and for the promotion of every phase of rural economics, 
make a wholesome atmosphere for the growing of the 
right sort of a country church. Here in Texas the army 
of farm demonstration agents and the scores of other 
rural workers under the direction of the extension de- 
partment of our noble A. & M. College, are the rural 
preacher’s potent allies. As such, I pray for them as de- 
voutly as I do for the missionaries on the foreign field. 
The rural preacher is blind if he does not use and co- 
operate with them, and they are blind if they do not use 
and cooperate with him. 

5. A new interest in itself on the part of the country 
church. In many places the country churches them- 
selves are seeing visions and dreaming dreams. They 
are beginning to see their mighty responsibilities and are 
responding to the call for a more vigorous, spiritual, 
aggressive, altruistic church life. Churches are study- 


56 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


ing rural economics as an adjunct to their work and 
rural economists are studying the churches as an adjunct 
to theirs in a practical way not known before. Col- 
leges and theological seminaries are putting new em- 
phasis upon country life and are offering courses de- 
signed to awaken among young preachers a love for the 
country pastorate and to qualify them for filling these 
important positions. 

The study of this question develops many shadows but 
the sunshine is mightier than the shadow. The problem 
is beset with many cross currents and the student of it is 
often saddened by the perceptible undertow, but above 
all this there are evidences, though they be as meagre 
as Elijah’s cloud the size of a man’s hand, that in- 
dicate that there is coming in, by God’s good grace, a 
tide that shall bear our country churches onward and 
upward to better and nobler things. 


CHAPTER V 


DIREICUUTIES IN; SECURING 
PASTORS 


A lone lamb in a wilderness is not a more pathetic 
sight than a church in the open country a whole year 
without a pastor. The tragedy in the kingdom is that 
most of our country churches are without pastors much 
of the time. This is not due to any definite wish or pre- 
meditated plan of theirs. Practically all of them would 
be glad, and many of them are genuinely anxious, to 
secure a capable pastor. But they are confronted with 
obstacles and imbued with weaknesses that make that 
devoutly to be wished consummation always difficult, 
often impracticable, and sometimes impossible. In the 
hope that emphasizing them may help to remove them 
let us consider in detail some of these difficulties. 

1. Isolation. The country church not being on the 
main line of denominational travel becomes pastorless 
and finds itself shut off from those ordinary human agen- 
cies by which vacant churches are put in touch with 
prospective pastors. If a town pastorate becomes va- 
cant the fact is immediately published in the denomi- 
national paper, and good men—secretaries, college presi- 
dents, and other altruistic brethren are quick to suggest 
this one and that one as good pastoral material. Thus, 
without seeking it, the town church is furnished with a 
fairly good list of names of available preachers. 


[57] 


58 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


But ordinarily a country church might be without a 
pastor a year and the fact would not reach the office 
of the denominational paper, and even when it does the 
altruistic leading brethren do not seem to “feel moved” 
to help them in finding a pastor. Now this is not to say 
that we leading altruistic brethren deliberately discrimi- 
nate against the country church in dispensing our benefi- 
cent aid. (If any brother does not understand the 
reason for this difference, if he will write me I shall be 
glad to give him the information privately.) ... After 
sober second thought I have decided that since my cor- 
respondence is already fairly heavy it might be better 
to give the information here and now. My dear unso- 
phisticated brother, the reason of this difference is that 
when the church at the Forks of the Creek is pastorless 
no preacher writes to these aforesaid leading altruistic 
brethren asking to be ‘“‘put in touch” with the church. 
Different when the First Church at Townville is vacant. 
Lest this abortive effort at humor should put me in a 
false light let me hasten to say that in my judgment 
there is nothing wrong if a preacher under certain con- 
ditions, and on rare occasions, asks a brother preacher 
with whom he is intimate to mention his name to a va- 
cant church with which this brother is acquainted, nor . 
is there anything wrong if the brother preacher com- 
plies with the request. The only point I am making is 
that whatever benefit comes to a church from that sort 
of help the country church usually does not get it. The 
contention is that the country church is usually denied 
most of those human agencies by which vacant church 
and efficient pastor are brought in touch with each other, 
and that this fact constitutes one of its difficulties in se- 
curing a pastor. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 59 


2. But the country church in calling a preacher is 
confronted with the further difficulty of the incompetence 
of much of the available material. 

If the reader thinks this sentence is a critical, non- 
appreciative attack upon my noble friend, the country 
preacher, let him read again the first chapter of this 
volume. Every word of that chapter is here re-affirmed, 
but it would argue blindness not to see, and dishonesty 
not to say, that both in the matter of training and in 
native ability many of the preachers to whom our coun- 
try churches are shut up for pastors are pitiably incom- 
petent. Not long since an intelligent country layman 
said to me: “I do not know what our church is going 
to do for a preacher.” When I reminded him of the fact 
that there were twenty preachers in the county, many 
of them without work, and asked why his church did 
not call one of them he said: “It is true we have these 
twenty preachers. They are all good men, without a 
stain on their character or an interrogation point after 
their fidelity. Many of them would be glad to be our 
pastor, but we have a nine-months tenth grade public 
school where most of our children graduate, and many 
of them are sent off to college. Now the fact is that 
many of our young people are better educated than any 
of these preachers, and whether it ought to be so or not, 
it is true that a preacher will have a hard time leading 
our young people if they regard him as an inferior in 
the matter of education.” That is not the high-brow crit- 
icism of a cold-blooded theological professor but the de- 
liberate conclusion of a country layman who was seeing 
the thing tried every year. Every consolidated school 
with its ten grades and nine-months’ session imperiously 
demands a better equipped ministry for our country 
churches. Nobody realizes this fact more than these 


60 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


same poorly equipped men among our country preachers 
who are doing their best to hold the situation in spite of 
the handicap under which they labor, and of which they 
are more conscious than anybody else. We must get 
away from the heresy that town churches need educated 
preachers and country churches do not. Other things 
being equal, a country church will yield to the touch of 
a trained preacher quicker and more fruitful response 
than a town church. Every mark of real refinement and 
culture the preacher manifests will be appreciated as 
keenly in the country as in town. 

3. A third thing that stands in the way of a country 
church securing a pastor is the insufficiency of mainte- 
nance offered. 

It is right for us to pray the Lord to thrust laborers 
into the harvest, but one finds himself almost approv- 
ing the statement of Jesse Mercer when he declared in 
the Georgia Baptist Convention that he had about quit 
making that prayer and had substituted for it the prayer 
that the Lord would untie the hands of the men he had 
already called, that they might give full time to the 
work. This far-visioned prophet saw a hundred years 
ago that the blight of our country churches would be 
their parsimony in the matter of pastoral support. In 
the economy of God human institutions, including the 
churches he establishes, grow as the result of human 
leadership. The author joins his brothers of the mystic 
type in believing that the affairs of a church should be 
administered by the Holy Spirit, but in a good long 
experience he has never seen it done except through 
Spirit-chosen human agency. The Israelites had their 
pillar of fire by night and cloud by day, but they also 
had Moses. When you find a church making unusual 
progress even in the deeper spiritual things you will al- 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 61 


ways find that God has provided a Moses qualified for 
leadership. The highest order of leadership is not pos- 
sible without an undivided mind and definite consecra- 
tion to the one task. If that is true then the meagre 
salary paid the average country preacher makes his best 
leadership impossible. By their present parsimonious 
program our country churches are cheating themselves. 
They invest just enough in the pastoral enterprise to 
keep them poor and miserable, whereas if they would 
invest more heavily it would make them rich and joyful. 
The church in Louisiana that paid $25.00 per month for 
absentee fourth-time pastoral service found collecting 
the pastor’s salary an excruciating and almost hopeless 
task, and found that in all church activities they were 
so poor they had to lean against the fence twice to cast 
-ashadow. But with a full-time man-on-the-job pastorate 
they found the $150.00 per month easier to collect than 
the $25.00 per month had been and found themselves 
growing strong and vigorous and joyous in every depart- 
ment of church work. 

Our country churches may as well make up their minds 
that they are never going to have any joyful, satisfying, 
permanent growth till they find a pastor qualified for 
leadership and untie his hands that he may lead. When 
Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead he not only said 
“Let him go,” but he also said “Loose him.” It is blind 
folly for our churches to expect a pastor to do much go- 
ing in the matter of leadership when they refuse to 
“loose him” that he may go. In this complicated mod- 
ern life effective leadership is impossible to a pastor 
whose hands are tied to a plow or a jack-plane, or a pub- 
lic school text-book five days in the week. He might not 
be a good leader if his hands were loosed. He cannot 
be a good leader with his hands tied. 


62 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


Pastors are human beings and we may therefore ex- 
pect them to act like human beings. If they do thus 
act we may expect them to accept pastorates that of- 
fer a support for their families while they give them- 
selves to the church and its work rather than accept the 
call of churches whose parsimony makes giving full-time 
to the ministry impossible. Preachers being just flesh 
and blood are not much inclined to accept pastorates 
where they are required to “make brick without straw.” 
It is true that country people do not handle as much ac- 
tual money as their town neighbors, and cannot there- 
fore compete with them in the size of salaries paid their 
preachers, but there is a way by which they can make 
it possible for the pastors to give full time to the min- 
istry. Since it is to be discussed somewhat in detail 
in another chapter of this volume we will not go into it 
here further than to beg that all men not only pray that 
God will thrust out laborers, but that he will lead his 
churches to untie the hands of these laborers that they 
may give full time to the harvest fields into which he 
thrusts them. 

4. A fourth barrier to country churches securing pas- 
tors is inadequacy of equipment. The normal preacher 
wants to labor where he can do the greatest good. Other 
things being equal, he can do the greatest good where he 
has the best equipment. It is freely admitted that he 
will often make a mistake in deciding where he can do 
the greatest good if he allows mere physical equipment 
to be the dominant thing in his decision. It is easy to 
see how this preacher could do more good with this church 
under a tree or a brush arbor than he could do with 
that one in a good building with every modern equip- 
ment. But since I have made that concession the broth- 
er that was ready to criticize my position ought to con- 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 63 


cede that the church that has the best equipment has, 
for that reason, a better chance to get a good preacher 
than the one poorly equipped. 

If a preacher receives a call to a country church with 
a good preaching auditorium, modern equipment for a 
good Sunday school, young people’s work, and for the 
care of the social life of the community and a comfort- 
able home for his family, it will take a tremendous con- 
viction of duty to lead him to decline that call and ac- 
cept one to a neighboring church that has none of these 
things. The sum of the whole matter is that, if the 
church, for any reason, fails to build and equip a work- 
shop, it will be all the more difficult for that church to 
get a workman. These two things react on each other. 
Good equipment will attract and stimulate a good pas- 
tor. A good pastor will create atmospheres resulting in 
good equipment. 

5. Another thing that hinders the country church in 
getting a pastor is the erroneous views held by the aver- 
age person. The average person believes that man is 
somewhat discounted if he lives in the country. Four 
college girls are talking. One announces gladly that her 
father is a lawyer, a second with equal pride that hers 
is a merchant; the third with no less gusto that hers is 
a banker, the fourth admits with a blush that her father 
is a farmer. Four college boys are talking. One says 
with pride, “I live in Dallas,” another with zest, “I live 
in Little Rock’”—the third with exhilaration, “I live in 
Memphis”; and the fourth with confusion and apologies 
says, “I live in the country.” 

This point is illustrated in the fact that our word 
“boor,” which now means a rude, ill-bred clownish per- 
son at first simply meant a farmer. The same idea is 
illustrated in our adjective “countrified.” This discount- 


64 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


ing tendency is not confined to town people. How often 
do we hear men saying, “Oh, I’m just a farmer.” The 
preacher does the same thing. “I am just a country 
preacher” is often heard in public and private speech. 
We are never going to be our best till we can eliminate 
it from the thinking of the people that farming is less 
honorable than other honest callings, and that preach- 
ing to country churches is a sign of inferiority. Every- 
body knows how difficult it is for a country church to 
induce a high-class, well-trained, successful preacher to 
move out to an open country community. Even if he 
is willing to accept the pastorate of this country church 
he wants to live in town, and make hasty, monthly or 
semi-monthly, or weekly visits to the church of which he 
calls himself pastor. One prime reason why the country 
church has this difficulty in locating a preacher is that 
if a hitherto successful preacher accepts a country pas- 
torate, and especially if he moves on the field the people 
at once conclude that his star is on the wane, and all 
denominational forces automatically begin to regard him 
and treat him as a back number. Some men have con- 
viction and character enough to go against a tide like 
that, but the average man has not. This tendency to dis- 
count a man because he is a country preacher makes a 
psychological atmosphere for our country churches as 
withering as the hot breath of a Lybian sirocco or an 
Arabian simoon. There was never a foolish, superficial, 
erroneous tendency more unjustifiable nor in the long 
run more harmful. It is high time that thought-molding 
men and institutions should lay themselves out to correct 
this foolish notion. Country churches will find it difficult, 
almost impossible, to get the kind of preacher they long 
for till we get beyond the place where the country preach- 
er is depreciated in his own thinking and openly dis- 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 65 


paraged in the thinking and conduct of others. It will 
be a golden day for our country churches when the time 
comes, if it ever comes, when the country preacher 
(character, ability, and usefulness considered) shall be 
given rank equal to the “metropolitan bishop.” He is 
entitled to it, the welfare of our country churches de- 
mands that he should have it, and we write ourselves 
down a lot of narrow provincialists if we withhold it 
from him. 

6. The difficulty of securing heartiness and unanimity 
in making the call. To begin with, the farmer is even 
yet, more than other groups, an individualist. He is not 
as well trained as others in the matter of group action, 
teamwork, cooperative movement. The result is it is 
hard to get him, when in a minority in church confer- 
ence, to yield heartily to the will of the majority. 

Another thing making unanimity in the country church 
call difficult is that here, more than in towns and cities, 
local neighborhood divisions are permitted to creep into 
church affairs. It is not uncommon to see rural churches 
divide on a preacher because two of the leading families 
divided years ago over a cross fence or some other sub- 
ject equally foreign to the question of the kind of a 
preacher this church ought to have. It is common talk 
in many country churches that if one leading family 
favors a preacher the other leading family will go against 
him. 

But another barrier to heartiness and unanimity is 
the difficulty of getting a representative number together 
to consider the question. This is especially true if the 
church has been without a pastor for several months, as 
is usually the case if it is an orthodox country Baptist 
church. I saw a case of it the other day. A church with 
several hundred members was trying to call a pastor. 


66 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


Less than fifty members were present at the conference. 
Only twenty-eight voted—fifteen for and thirteen against 
the proposed pastor—about half the members present 
not voting. Some brother made a motion to reconsider, 
which motion prevailed. Then they adjourned. Next 
time they try they will probably be worse confused. 
How easily churches, and especially country churches, 
can divide and become dazed over the question of call- 
ing a pastor! The annual call (which thing ought to 
be wholly abandoned) practically guarantees an annual 
church upheaval. It may not be specifically forbidden 
in scripture, but it is forbidden inferentially by every 
scripture that enjoins decency, orderliness and stability 
in the administration of church affairs. If it is not for- 
bidden in scripture it is certainly forbidden by both hu- 
man experience and common sense. I know that the 
indefinite call will sometimes embarrass the church over 
the question of how to get rid of the preacher, but there 
is far less danger at that point than there is in giving an 
annual invitation to every disgruntled element to come 
in now and embarrass the bone and sinew of the church 
in the call of a pastor. It is easy enough for even good 
people to become dissatisfied with the pastor without 
holding an annual training school for the development 
of experts in that sphere. 


CHAPTER VI 


Din SD RIGH Ty SEDE OF THE 
COUNTRY PASTORATE 


For fifty years the country preacher has had a hard 
time. Just after the Civil War, for reasons too obvious to 
need discussion here, there set in a great tide from the 
country to the town and the country community with its 
church and its preacher felt keenly the loss of many of 
its brightest and best. When we entered the World War 
this tide had turned the other way and the drift of popu- 
lation was from the town to the country, and the country 
community with its church showed signs of quickening 
and rehabilitation. With the close of the World War 
the tide was again reversed and we are now experiencing 
the discouraging drift from country to town. But there 
is every reason to hope that this unfortunate incidental 
evil of the war is only temporary, and that in a few years 
the stream will again be flowing in the right direction. 
This is not a random off-hand statement in which the 
wish is father to the thought, but is a sane conclusion 
based upon the relation of cause and effect. Whenever, 
all things considered, country life becomes more de- 
sirable than town life people are going to move to the 
country. 

There are certain influences at work, many of them as 
yet hardly noticeable, which must inevitably add to the 
charm of country life. Silent but irresistible currents 
have set in that must give the country preeminence 

[67] 


68 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


over town whether from the standpoint of personal com- 
fort, dependable, conservative financial gain, wholesome 
environment, or a field of usefulness. Now what are some 
of these currents? 

1. Enlargement of horizon. In the olden days when 
mail was to be had, at best, only on Saturday afternoon 
when some member of the family put in the better part 
of a day going to town it was difficult for the farmer to 
have a part in the thinking and activities of the wide 
world—for the simple reason that these thoughts and 
activities were stale, almost ancient history before the 
news of them reached him. But now the morning paper 
is brought to his door every day and he finds himself 
identified with the throbbing activities of the whole 
world. When Cleveland was elected president the av- 
erage farmer waited from seven to thirty days for news 
of the election. When Harding was elected the pro- 
gressive farmer took up his telephone or his morning 
paper and had the results simultaneously with his city 
neighbor. Keeping thus in touch with things he feels 
himself no longer a mere pawn to be moved about on 
the chess board, but one of the players in the game. The 
preacher will be quick to see how this will add to the 
charm of a country pastorate. 

2. Increased transportation facilities. Good roads; 
interurban trains; automobiles made cheaper, more dur- 
able, and more serviceable; the well-bred horse instead 
of the former scrub pony or “yoke of steers,” the low- 
priced buggy or carriage instead of the farm wagon of 
former days will conspire to increase the comfort, the 
profit and the all-around progress of the farmer. In 
former times, particularly in black land districts, there 
would be weeks in the rainy season when no vehicle 
could pass over the roads. Now we are rapidly ap- 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 69 


proaching the time when all considerable neighborhoods 
will be connected with graveled or surfaced roads as 
good in the rain as in the shine. In the memory of men 
who will read these lines, roads were so rough and teams 
so sorry that thirty miles a day was counted a good 
drive. Now with improved stock and better roads sev- 
enty-five and even a hundred miles a day is not un- 
common; and in the automobile two hundred miles a 
day is easy. Who can fail to see that these conditions 
must inevitably mean better times for the farmer, and 
that better times for the farmer will mean the possibil- 
ity of better country churches, and that better country 
churches will mean a happier, a larger, a more useful 
career for the country preacher. 

3. Increased price of farm products. In former days 
a bale of cotton brought from twenty to forty dollars— 
and the seed rotted in the gin yard. Now a bale of 
cotton with its seed will bring from one hundred to one 
hundred and fifty dollars. The new scheme for the scien- 
tific, cooperative marketing of cotton, worked out by 
Mr. Sapiro and already in successful operation in sev- 
eral Southern States, will make this price staple and 
dependable, at the same time making the crop “grown 
and to be grown” an acceptable collateral at bank. 

In former years, owing to poor transportation facili- 
ties, when there was a big crop of corn in a given section 
prices fell to almost nothing—so much so that in many 
instances corn was used for fuel—but now transporta- 
tion facilities are such that prices of corn will not be 
governed by the demand in the local neighborhood, 
but by the demand in the markets of the world. In the 
matter of perishable fruits and vegetables, time was 
when a bountiful crop was almost a calamity because 
the farmer must see much of it rot in garden and or- 


70 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


chard. But refrigerator cars, rapid transit and intelli- 
gent cooperative marketing are working together to as- 
sure a stable market for all these perishable products. 
The day is upon us when the farmer will no longer be 
called upon, as he has so often in the past, to send a 
check to supplement the price of a carload of produce 
in order to pay freight and commission charges. By 
means of an intelligent, scientific, cooperative system 
of marketing he will send his produce to that spot some- 
where on earth where there is a demand for it and where 
it will, therefore, bring a living price. And the world 
has become so small now that that spot will not be so 
hard to find as when men and information traveled by ox- 
wagons and sailboats. Our brother, the country pastor, 
will come in for his share of this new stability and 
prosperity, and our city cousins will begin to make 
pilgrimages for permanent possession in this rural land 
of promise. 

4. Improved farming facilities both for speed and for 
comfort. Formerly farm work was nearly all drudgery. 
Now with improved machinery and new kinds of power 
much farm work is almost a luxury. Formerly twenty 
acres to the “hand” was a good undertaking. Now with 
improved facilities one hundred acres is not uncommon. 
Then if he cleared ten dollars per acre he made two 
hundred dollars. Now if he clears ten dollars per acre 
he makes one thousand dollars. 

The first steel plow was made from an old saw in 
1837. It is a far cry from the wooden plow of 1836, 
imperfectly preparing half an acre a day, to the steam 
plow of 1923, perfectly preparing thirty to forty acres 
a day, doing the breaking, harrowing and planting 
simultaneously. The first really practicable reaper was 
made in 1840, the first thresher in 1850, and the first 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 71 


steam thresher in 1860. Prior to these dates the world’s 
grain was cut first with a reap hook, later with a scythe, 
and still later with the cradle. The grain was threshed 
by placing the heads in a pile and continuously driv- 
ing cattle or horses over it (hence the Scripture, “muzzle 
not the ox that treadeth out the corn’), or by beating 
it with a flail, and then throwing it with a sort of wooden 
shovel into the air till the chaff was blown away. The 
grain was ground between two stones turned, first by 
hand, then by ox or horse power, then by water power, 
then by steam, and now by electricity. Would not the 
twentieth century starve if it had to wait on those 
primitive processes for its flour? 

It has been estimated that the bushel of wheat that in 
1830 required three hours of labor for production re- 
quired in 1896 just ten minutes. A bushel of corn in 
1850 required four and a half hours of labor—in 1894 
forty-one minutes. A ton of baled hay required in 1860 
thirty-five and a half hours—in 1894 eleven and a half 
hours. In 1899 this improved farm machinery repre- 
sented in the United States alone several hundred mil- 
lion dollars of human labor. That year the American 
farmer spent a hundred million dollars for his im- 
proved implements, leaving him six hundred millions 
to the good. And the end is not yet. Will you read a 
quotation from Dr. Fiske’s charming book, “The Chal- 
lenge of the Country?” 

“The most recent publication of a great farm ma- 
chinery trust entitled ‘Three Hundred Years of Power 
Development,’ dismisses electricity as impracticable for 
farm uses because of its expense; and says of wind 
power: ‘This power at best is unreliable and usually 
unavailable when most needed.’ Yet the writer has 
discovered a 1,120-acre farm in North Dakota where 


12 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


electricity is generated by wind, and wind power is 
stored in electricity at a very slight cost, and it meets 
many of the mechanical needs of this prosperous farm. 
So far as known this is the first instance of a storage- 
battery electric plant upon a farm, the battery being 
charged by wind power! The ingenious older son, now 
a graduate of the State School of Science, experimented 
with this plan all through his boyhood and is now se- 
curing patent rights to protect his invention. He dis- 
covered from the U. S. Weather Bureau reports the mean 
wind velocity which could be depended upon at Moore- 
ton, N. D., and built his windmill accordingly. An 
ingenious automatic regulator protects the battery from 
over-charging. The electricity provides seventy-five 
lights for house, barn and other farm buildings; power 
for wheat elevator, all laundry machinery, washing, 
ironing, centrifugal drying; cream separator and other 
dairy machinery; electric cook stove, et cetera, in the 
farm kitchen; electric fans for the summer and bed 
warmers in the winter; electric pumps for irrigating, and 
even an electric vulcanizer for repairing auto tires! 
This is the way one farm boy succeeded in harnessing 
the fierce prairie winds and compelling them to do his 
drudgery.” 

On the point of comfort take, for example, his chores. 
In the past his first irksome task in coming from the 
field was to draw thirty buckets of water for his cows, 
horses, and hogs, from a well thirty to one hundred feet 
deep. In the future his gasoline engine, costing twenty- 
five dollars, pumps the water while he unharnesses the 
team. Then he must “shuck” a hundred ears of corn 
for his stock. In the future his gasoline engine and 
patent husker will have the work already done. Then 
he must milk five or six scrub cows, high jumpers and 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 73 


hard kickers, to get milk enough for his family. In the 
future he sits down under the shed by one quiet Jersey 
and gets milk enough and to spare. Then he must cut 
enough hard post oak or elm or black-jack wood to last 
in both “big house” and kitchen till tomorrow night. 
In the future the gasoline engine has already carved 
up enough to last through the winter—doing it in one 
piece of an unoccupied afternoon. Then if he screws 
up his courage to take a bath before retiring, he will 
hunt up a washtub, put it in the kitchen, draw him three 
or four buckets of water from the deep well and then 
take his bath on the installment plan. In the future 
he turns the faucet and the little gasoline engine puts 
the water in the bath tub while he is undressing. Under 
the old conditions of drudgery and discomfort and scant 
poverty, who wonders that a young man wanted to leave 
the farm? Under these new conditions who wonders 
that he wants to get back to it? And under these con- 
ditions may we not expect that our best trained and 
most successful preachers will rejoice rather than com- 
plain if, in the providence of God, it is theirs to minis- 
ter to a rural field. 

5. An wmproved public school system. One of the 
most cogent objections the rural pastor, and especially 
the rural pastor’s wife, has urged to living among his 
people has been the inadequate provision for educating 
his children. The typical country school in former 
years was a small one-room, one-teacher affair, run- 
ning three to five months in the year, satisfied with 
a third-grade teacher, unable to carry the pupils beyond 
the sixth or seventh grade. But now with the consoli- 
dated school, made possible by better roads, public ’bus 
transportation for the children and a broader vision on 
the part of patrons, there is, or soon will be, in rural 


74 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


neighborhoods a reasonably adequate school building, 
with good teachers, running nine months in the year and 
carrying pupils through the ordinary eleven grades, with 
intelligent agricultural experiment work attached. Such 
a school will be reasonably accessible to every rural 
child in every moderately populated county in every 
State in the Union. Make the country public school 
equal to those in town and you have gone far toward 
solving the problem of keeping the key men in the coun- 
try neighborhoods from moving to town. You have, at 
the same time, removed the chief objection the rural 
pastor and his wife have to moving on to the country 
field and giving their lives to its moral and spiritual de- 
velopment. 

6. Rural Self-respect. With its drudgery largely re- 
moved by improved farm’ machinery and better rural 
home equipment; with its narrowness of method re- 
moved by daily mail, telephone, radio and rapid trans- 
portation; with its ignorance removed by a constantly 
improving system of universal rural public education; 
with an organized and satisfying rural social life, and 
with a church that meets the spiritual demands of his 
nature, the intelligent man will rejoice in, rather than 
apologize for, the fact that he lives in the country—and 
the minister will be proud of the fact that he ministers 
to a rural people. Whenever a man begins to pity him- 
self and apologize for himself he has about reached the 
bottom. One does not need to go far back into the past 
to find that condition common, if not almost universal 
in rural communities. But he has a poor sense of at- 
mospheres who does not realize that this day of self-pity 
among country people is passing, and that a new day of 
class self-consciousness and self-respect has dawned. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 75 


Ministering to such a people will have an ever-increas- 
ing charm for the trained, successful preacher. 

7. Respect in which others hold him. If the ruralist 
has gained in a new respect for himself and his calling 
he has also gained in the new esteem in which others 
hold him. There are three facts which may be cited 
as proof of this proposition. (1) Agriculture in the 
schools. In former days each State had what was 
claimed to be an agricultural college. It was, as a 
matter of fact, generally a military institute where rich 
men’s sons had a high, rolling time. Now the agricul- 
tural colleges are really training men to be farmers, and 
many of the best public schools even in the cities are 
putting in courses in farming. Within a few years every 
high school will have its course in scientific and prac- 
tical farming just as it now has its course in higher 
mathematics. This tendency is giving farming an entree 
into good society. This will tend to hold the present boy 
crop on the farm and take to it many recruits from 
town. (2) The influence of the great magazines. In 
recent years these magazines have been giving much 
space to the pleasure and profit and best methods of 
farming. The Saturday Evenng Post is perhaps the 
most widely read journal in this country. Have you no- 
ticed how often there is in its columns an attractive 
article on some phase of agricultural life? (8) The in- 
fluence of the great book publishers. In the last few 
years—say since Mr. Roosevelt appointed his Country 
Life Commission—there have been more books written 
on rural problems than in the hundred years preceding. 
Many of these books have been written by outstanding 
men in various walks of life and have had a wide cir- 
culation. 


76 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


Now, are we right in considering that these three 
facts indicate that the people in general are coming to 
give agriculture in their thinking its rightful place of 
dignity and respectability? Are we not right in the 
further conclusion that in the future the preacher will 
regard ministering to a rural people a joyful rather than 
an irksome task? | 

The thing that casts a shadow over this optimistic 
outlook is the fact that our country churches have not 
kept pace with the general progress in rural life. In- 
dustrial country life has come, or is rapidly coming, into 
the scientific, organized, cooperative life of the twen- 
tieth century, while too many country churches have 
remained static in the old pioneer, individualistic type. 
Industrially, country people are living in the twentieth 
century; ecclesiastically, they are living in the middle 
of the nineteenth. 

The basic principles, the Scripture-taught doctrines 
of the church have not changed, should never change, and 
if we are wise will never change. But while the consti- 
tutional basis, the generic principles, must always be the 
same, the method of propagating these doctrines and 
principles may and should change in response to the 
demand of an ever-changing social mind. These eternal 
doctrines of the church now and a century ago are the 
same, but the practical program of the church a century 
ago must be adapted to twentieth century habits of 
thought and action. The church program that was en- 
tirely adequate a century ago is the acme of inefficiency 
now. 

The republican form of government constitutionally 
guaranteed to the United States is now just what it was 
a hundred years ago, but the methods of administrating 
that government by George Washington and by Calvin 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 77 


Coolidge are very different. Just so the program of the 
church to-day is very different from that of yesterday. 
No sane person despises Washington because he never 
saw a train or a telephone or an electric light. But no sane 
person has demanded of Coolidge that he shall abandon 
his train or his electric light or his telephone in order 
to be a president just like Washington. In this me- 
chanical effort to make them alike we make them un- 
like. Due to different conditions, the only way Coolidge 
can be like Washington is not to do the things Wash- 
ington did in the way he did them. The Latin proverb, 
“The times change and we change with them,” is good 
or bad according to one’s viewpoint. If one is thinking 
of basic, fundamental, constitutional principles, he is 
right in maintaining that there should be no change. 
But if one is thinking of the application of these prin- 
ciples to practical life, he is right in contending that 
each new generation may, and perhaps should, change. 
In many country communities if grandfather returned to 
earth, about the only thing he would recognize would 
be the old country meeting house and the church’s 
methods of doing business. The talking machine, the 
riding machine, the plowing machine, the reaping ma- 
chine, the threshing machine, the daily postman’s whis- 
tle, would all be strange to him, but when he went to the 
meeting house he would be at home. The church is still 
running, or trying to run, on the old program. It would 
be a tragedy unspeakable if when he went to meeting 
he did not find the same old Bible and the teaching 
of its unchangeable doctrines, and the humble practic- 
ing of its eternal precepts, but it would be a travesty 
if he found the church trying to promote these doctrines 
and precepts by the program of a hundred years ago. 


78 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


But let it be said that this clinging to the pioneer 
methods is by no means universal among country 
churches. Here and there will be found a country 
church which has provided for itself equipment, and laid 
out for itself a program, meeting in a large way the de- 
mands of the most approved modern methods. May 
their tribe increase! Generally speaking, country 
churches are notably satisfying in the tenacity with 
which they hold and the constancy with which they 
teach wholesome evangelical truth. There is no plea 
made here for a modification of this old-time gospel 
message. The one thing here insisted on is that there 
should be an advance made in the method of getting 
that message out to the people. 


CHAPTER VII 


WHE COUNTRY PREACHER AND 
THE ORDINANCES 


Because he is usually not as well equipped for ad- 
ministering them as his brother in the town church it 
seems especially appropriate to say a word intended to 
help the country preacher in the appropriate and attrac- 
tive observance of the ordinances of the church. 

The two Christian symbolic ordinances are baptism 
and the Lord’s Supper. These are clearly church ordi- 
nances. So far as human authority functions in the 
matter they are administered by the authority of the 
church. But the act of administering these ordinances 
is primarily in the hands of the preacher. In the past 
many preachers have been so absorbed with the purely 
controversial side of these ordinances touching the ques- 
tion of mode and subjects that there has been little time 
for considering other important phases of the work of 
these silent but eloquent gospel messengers. In recent 
years the late J. M. Frost has made a notable contribu- 
tion to the literature of this subject in his two outstand- 
ing books, “The Moral Dignity of Baptism” and the 
“Memorial Supper.” In these books he calls the mind 
away from the old battleground of mode and subjects 
and seeks to focus attention upon the moral and spiritual 
significance of the ordinances. Herein he rendered to his 
own denomination and to Christianity in general a far- 


reaching service. 
[79] 


80 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


It seems to me, however, that another word yet ought 
to be spoken touching the purely practical question of 
delicacy and propriety and appropriateness in the act 
of administering these ordinances. We have, to be sure, 
lost incaleculably in our failure properly to stress the 
moral and spiritual significance, the symbolic meaning 
of these ordinances. I wonder if we have not suffered 
loss greater than we realize on account of the crude, 
awkward, sometimes offensive, way in which we preach- 
ers have performed the act of administering these ordi- 
nances. 

There is no way of estimating the amount and de- 
gree of suffering endured by sensitive people on account 
of the crass, awkward, and often course way in which 
thoughtless preachers have administered these beautiful 
ordinances. I say “beautiful ordinances,” for in the 
hands of an adept nothing is more beautiful than these 
Christ-given symbols. Properly administered, these 
ordinances not only afford an unanswerable argument, 
but they make an almost irresistible appeal for the New 
Testament order. But, butchered and perverted by need- 
less crudities in administration, they often become a bar- 
rier to the soul’s response to the Savior. In practically 
every community there are people whose judgment is 
convinced, who have stood out against the call of con- 
science because of the clumsy, unskilful way in which 
they have usually seen the ordinances administered. 
Without relaxing an atom of our emphasis upon sound 
doctrine touching the act, the subject and the doctrinal 
import of these ordinances, I maintain when we dis- 
cuss them we ought to put a new emphasis upon the 
Scripture that requires “all things be done becomingly 
and in order.” | 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 81 


At the risk of being charged with tithing mint, anise 
and cummin, to the neglect of the weightier matters, let 
me venture a few practical suggestions as to the manner 
of administering the ordinances. 

Since more than half the rural preachers in the South 
are, like myself, Baptist, and since, therefore, one of the 
chief official functions of these men will be the immer- 
sion of those who come into their churches, it has seemed 
to me not inappropriate to make some brotherly sug- 
gestions on that important matter. 

Let us think for a moment about the place where the 
ordinance is to be administered. In cities, most towns 
and even in many rural neighborhoods baptistries are 
practicable, and should be provided where at all pos- 
sible. This is especially true in large sections of the 
Southwest where running streams are not common and 
where black mud prevails. A running stream with 
gravel bed and over-hanging trees is God’s ideal spot 
for administering baptism, but a “dirt tank” on a bald 
prairie of a summer afternoon and in black land, where 
the mud is about as deep as the water, is the devil’s 
choice place to rob baptism of its beauty and charm. 
Under such conditions the sensitive preacher who admin- 
isters it and the sensitive candidate who submits to the 
ordinance may indeed rejoice in the consciousness of a 
duty performed, but both will experience a sense of em- 
barrassment and a feeling of protest, perhaps subscon- 
sciously, against a performance that so inadequately sets 
forth the true meaning of the ordinance. Baptizing is one 
of the prominent functions of a church. Not that it 
saves, or helps to save anybody’s soul, but our Lord 
considered it of enough importance to include it specifi- 
cally in his Great Commission. Therefore, the church 
ought to make such provision that it will be easy for 


82 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


people to be baptized and the preacher ought to learn 
to administer baptism so tactfully and attractively that 
it will be easy for them to become willing to be bap- 
tized. What virtue is there in making it unnecessarily 
hard for people to do right? 

A church is only half sound on the doctrine of bap- 
tism if it does not provide every possible equipment to 
give the act of baptism a chance to speak its gospel 
message under the most satisfying and attractive envi- 
ronment. 

In many churches having baptistries the arrangement 
for “going down into” and “and coming out of the wa- 
ter” is so crude as to make the process both difficult 
and embarrassing. I have never been greatly disturbed 
by the “indecency” objection to immersion for bap- 
tism, but I do insist that careful attention to the place 
where it is to be administered will to a great extent dis- 
arm the critic who urges this objection. If by the use 
of a little judgment and by spending a little money the 
ordinance may be so administered that it will attract 
rather than repel, why should not the church avail it- 
self of that advantage? 

But a word should be spoken also about the method 
of administering the ordinance. In the first place, the 
candidates should be given a word of preliminary in- 
struction. The preacher having the experience of often 
baptizing forgets that those whom he baptizes have the 
experience but once and therefore do not know how to 
do nor what to expect. A little observation will easily 
suggest to a thoughtful pastor the instruction he needs 
to give. Certainly there should be a reassuring word 
spoken that there may be no nervousness. 

To forestall any manifestation of curiosity or levity it 
is well also to speak a kind word to the audience, empha- 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 83 


sizing the meaning of the ordinance—the fact that, to 
those who practice immersion, it represents a death and 
burial, and that it is therefore for those who are sub- 
mitting to it, the most solemn act of their lives. A word 
kindly spoken on this line will put the entire audience 
in immediate sympathy with what their neighbors are 
doing—even those who least agree with the views of the 
preacher or his church on the subject—and will almost 
certainly guarantee the most respectful and reverent at- 
titude toward the entire service. 

The minister should guard himself against haste or any 
sign of nervousness. Keeping in mind that he is of- 
ficiating symbolically at a burial, he should seek to 
create an atmosphere fitting such an occasion. 

Especially should the preacher study fitness in the 
matter of lowering the body beneath the water. I have 
suffered torture as I have seen some preachers dash the 
body under the water and snatch it up suddenly ap- 
parently having no appreciation of the tremendously 
solemn fact that he is then and there enacting the drama 
of a burial. Let the preacher constantly bear in mind 
that this is a burial set forth in symbol and in admin- 
istering the ordinance let every movement, in its de- 
liberateness and solemnity of manner, be appropriate to 
and consistent with that dominating idea. It was mine 
to witness a baptism recently which was conducted in 
such perfect harmony with the spirit and meaning of the 
ordinance that many of the spectators were moved to 
tears. I came away thanking God for the preacher who 
knew how to preach the gospel, as Christ intended it, 
through this beautiful ordinance. I came away with the 
further feeling that a baptismal scene such as this would 
be worth more in promoting the New Testament doc- 
trine of baptism than a whole library of polemics. 


84 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


Alas! Alas! that the memory of that touching, instruc- 
tive and beautiful scene should be displaced by the 
nightmare that haunts me in the form of other baptismal 
scenes that I can not forget, where the preacher per- 
mitted and helped to create an atmosphere of indifference 
and even of levity and where the ordinance was ad- 
ministered in such a coarse and awkward fashion as to 
cause the cheek to mantle with shame, and the head to 
bow with mortification on the part of every sensitive 
soul, having any just appreciation of the spiritual mean- 
ing and moral dignity of the occasion. 

But now let us say a word touching the practical mat- 
ter of the administration of the Lord’s Supper. 

In the first place, how often should it be observed? 
There are those who insist that it be observed every 
Lord’s Day and claim scriptural authority for it. These 
brethren base their position upon Acts 20: 7 where it is 
said, “Upon the first day of the week when the disciples 
came together to break bread, etc.” That this passage 
cannot be relied upon to establish the frequency of ob- 
serving the ordinance is clear from the fact that Acts 
2: 46 seems to intimate that for a time at least they 
did every day just what they are here said to have 
done on the first day of the week. “As often as ye eat 
this bread and drink this cup,” would seem to intimate 
that the time was left indeterminate. A good general 
rule would seem to be that it should occur often enough 
to be kept vivid, but not so often as to make it common- 
place. Among these who hold that the time for ob- 
serving the ordinance is not fixed by scripture there is 
wide divergence. Some observe it monthly, some quar- 
terly, some annually, and some, be it. sorrowfully ad- 
mitted, have no systematic plan for it. The result of 
this last plan or absence of plan, is that there are many 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 85 


churches and especially rural churches having services 
only one Sunday in the month, in which the Lord’s 
Supper has not been administered in years and a large 
per cent of whose members have never partaken of it. 

I tested the question with a group of about fifty coun- 
try and small village pastors recently and found that in 
a large majority of the churches where they ministered 
the Lord’s Supper had not been observed for a period of 
time ranging from one to five years. All these churches 
prided themselves on their soundness in the faith. Per- 
haps they were, but they were certainly far from sound 
in practice. 

Paul was discussing the faulty methods of administer- 
ing and a wrong spirit in partaking of the Lord’s Supper 
when he said (1 Cor. 11: 30), “For this cause many 
among you are weak and sickly and not a few sleep.” 
Most scholars seem to insist that this passage refers to 
physical sickness and death. Granting that it has that 
application I do not think it would be a case of violent, 
improper spiritualizing if we let it include also spiritual 
infirmity and spiritual lethargy. If we read the entire 
passage carefully I think we may easily see that Paul 
is insisting that a wrong method of administering and 
a wrong spirit in partaking of the Lord’s Supper so 
vitiates the ordinance that it loses its tonic power in the 
spiritual lives of the participants and that they there- 
fore easily drift into moral imbecility (weak) and re- 
ligious inconsistency (sickly) and spiritual lethargy 
(sleep). Whatever may be said for or against the sound- 
ness of this interpretation of the Scripture before us, no 
one who has had the opportunity of even limited observa- 
tion in the matter will deny that an indifferent slovenly 
non-spiritual attitude toward this ordinance on the part 
of the church that authorizes it or the preacher who ad- 


86 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


ministers it does result in spiritual degeneracy. He also 
knows that the Lord’s Supper tactfully, appropriately 
and spiritually administered not only quickens the 
spiritual life of the individual but invigorates the church 
as a whole. 

Now by way of some practical suggestions let me 
say first that by formal vote the church ought to set cer- 
tain times when it shall be the fixed rule to observe this 
ordinance. My own choice would favor a quarterly ob- 
servance. When the set time arrives the preacher ought 
to make the observance of the ordinance the prominent 
event of the day, making all other features of the service 
tributary to it. The songs should be selected with 
special reference to it, and the sermon should be given 
entirely to a discussion of some phase of the signifi- 
cance of the ordinance. Having fixed in its calendar the 
time nothing short of a cyclone ought to induce them to 
set it aside when the time arrives. For some time pre- 
ceding the important day the pastor ought to make ref- 
erence to it in his public services emphasizing its im- 
portance and urging the people to prepare their hearts 
for the occasion and to pray that it may be a means 
of spiritual uplift to the church. When the preacher de- 
livers a sermon on some subject entirely foreign to the 
great matter in hand and then having consumed the 
hour feels himself under the necessity of hurrying 
through the administration of the ordinance he belittles 
the occasion and robs it of what might have been its 
mighty spiritual power. 

Passing the bread and wine, so far from being a mere 
incident in the service of the hour, ought to be the soul 
mellowing climax toward which everything else in the 
entire service has been moving. In my own judgment it 
is a travesty to preach a controversial sermon on this 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 87 


occasion. The people will need instruction, to be sure, on 
the question of who should come to the Lord’s table, 
but it seems to me that the sermon on that somewhat 
controverted point ought to be preached on some other 
day. I have seen it happen that the preacher in his 
sermon led his people to discern in the Lord’s Supper a 
subject for debate rather than helping them to discern 
in it the Lord’s body. What I am insisting on here is 
that the entire setting for the occasion and all the atmos- 
pheric conditions should be such as to make it easy for 
the participants to discern the Lord’s body, and thus 
draw from the solemn symbolic occasion the greatest 
possible spiritual help. 

Now a few words as to the act of dispensing the ele- 
ments of the Lord’s Supper. Every detail should be care- 
fully pre-arranged that the service may proceed with- 
out delay or embarrassing complications. I witnessed 
a communion occasion recently in which the wine was 
brought to the table in the original bottle. The minister 
found difficulty in opening it. A deacon volunteered his 
assistance, and after some labor succeeded in removing 
the cork with his knife. The service proceeded, but it 
goes without saying that it limped along without spiritual 
power. Care should be exercised to see that the bread 
is properly prepared. More than once I have seen the 
service marred, if not utterly spoiled, by the fact that 
the bread was so tough that it could not be broken and 
had to be torn apart. Those who pass the elements will 
need some instruction. They should leave the table at 
the same time and return at the same time. Each should 
understand what part of the audience he is to serve that 
there be no pointing or talking or sign-making attract- 
ing attention from the ordinance itself. The entire ser- 


88 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


vice should proceed with a quiet, serious, deliberate dig- 
nity, consistent with the solemn scene being symbolized. 

The preacher who can not recognize the importance of 
the things herein discussed is such a pachyderm that, 
unless something can be found to quicken his sensibilities 
he will never amount to much as a pastor. Let us pray 
that our preachers may be so poised in judgment, so 
sane in conviction, so sensitive in feeling that they will 
intuitively administer these ordinances with a method 
and in a spirit worthy of them. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER AND 
HIS CHURCH PROGRAM 


A negro boy had visited his first circus. He took all 
the other animals seriously, but when he came to the 
giraffe he broke into a laugh saying, “Dem whut we is 
been a-seein’ is all right, dis here on’s a joke. Dey ain’t 
no sich animal as dat.” On the average the pickaninny’s 
remark could be justly applied to the program of the 
country church. As a rule there is no such thing, unless 
you call a spasmodic, irregular monthly preaching ser- 
vice a program. One preeminent weakness of the av- 
erage country church is that there has never been thought 
out for it, nor adopted by it any well-articulated and 
comprehensive program of what it proposes to be or do. 
The once-a-month appointment, the absentee pastor and 
the frequent pastoral change make such a thing exceed- 
ingly difficult. Yet even with this triple handicap much 
improvement could be made. The author is a Baptist, 
but he freely admits that, under the magnetic and states- 
man-like leadership of Dr. Warren H. Wilson the Presby- 
terians (U.S.A.) have set us all a good example in the 
matter now under discussion. 

They have selected here and there strategic country 
churches, have made it financially possible for them to 
maintain a full time pastorate, and have collaborated 
with church and pastor in laying out a worthy and chal- 
lenging program covering the whole question of the 


[89] 


90 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


church in its relation to the local community and the 
world. One of these country churches was located in 
the Wallace community, Van Zandt County, Texas. It 
had for its first full-time pastor, Rev. Millar Burrows. 
Among the first things the brilliant young pastor did was 
to work out and get the church to adopt a carefully pre- 
pared, constructive, comprehensive progressive program, 
which church and pastor agreed to regard as the goal to 
which they would work. This program was printed and a 
copy placed in the home of every member that all might 
see Just what definite things the church proposed to un- 
dertake. In this chapter is included practically a verba- 
tim copy of that entire program. It is reproduced here, 
not with the idea that any pastor or church would or 
should slavishly follow it as an absolute model. The belief 
is, however, unhesitatingly expressed, that it is on the 
whole looking in the right direction and that it would 
be a great day if all our country churches should adopt 
and seriously undertake to carry out some such pro- 
gram. My earnest wish and urgent request is that for- 
ward looking country pastors give it careful study. The 
charm, the romance, the thrill of many of our country 
pastorates is lost because there is not a fixed program 
of activity big enough and broad enough and difficult 
enough to challenge the full strength of church and 
pastor. 

No man can believe more thoroughly than I do that 
the gospel of Jesus Christ believed and practiced is the 
one hope of the world—rural and urban for time and for 
eternity. What I am here urging is not that there shall 
be less emphasis upon that fundamental fact. Rather, 
in my soul, I believe that it ought to be emphasized far 
more than it is. What I am urging upon my brethren 
in country pastorates is that they give very earnest con- 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER OT 


sideration to the question of finding the best method of 
getting this saving gospel out to all the people. This gos- 
pel is of God, and man adds to it and takes from it at his 
peril. But methods of presenting this gospel to the people 
are of men, and every true preacher ought to keep an 
open mind to any method that will help to get these 
words of life out to men in the most attractive, winsome, 
compelling way. 

We have no new gospel, but every century has brought 
a new day in the matter of method in presenting the old 
gospel. This means that the country preacher while 
proclaiming the same old gospel must remodel some of 
his methods of getting that old-time God-given message 
out to the people. The day has passed when the country 
preacher has discharged his obligation by the preaching 
of an emotional, eloquent, evangelically sound or evan- 
gelistically earnest sermon. He must do that as well 
as, and even better than, he ever did it before. But he 
must not close his eyes to the fact that there are new 
tides in the rural community, and he must realize that 
instead of ignoring these tides, or antagonizing them, he 
must utilize them as one of many methods of getting 
his glorious gospel to the people. 

He is blind who does not see that in recent years there 
has come a new atmosphere in rural life. The Sociology 
departments of colleges and universities are busy holding 
rural life conferences and making suggestions for the 
organization and promotion of country communities. 
Now: what are we theological conservatives and 
orthodox religionists going to do about these always 
altruistic, but sometimes radical and even unscriptural 
methods of developing a community? We can ignore 
them and laugh at them and sniff at them and fuss at 
them and storm at them while the radicals by means of 


92 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


them take charge of rural communities and high brow 
sociologists impregnate them with the views of so-called 
Modernism. On the other hand we can get into this 
movement with a new interest in rural life and make it 
contribute a worthy part toward stabilizing and promot- 
ing the real things of Christ. It is easy for the ease- 
loving superficial preacher, choosing the line of least re- 
sistance, to roll his eyes heavenward, and say that this 
is all a new fangled business, and the good old way is 
good enough for him. But the forward looking man who 
loves the gospel and is anxious that the people shall be 
kept true to the faith of the fathers will take a lively 
interest in this new country life movement and will take 
a man’s part in seeking to utilize the much that is good 
in it and trying bravely and courageously to neutralize 
whatever is in it calculated to undermine vital godliness 
or subvert the teaching of God’s Word. 

In introducing here the program of the Wallace Church 
let the reader bear in mind that this is the program of 
a Presbyterian Church. In it, therefore, there are ex- 
pressions both in the sphere of theology and of eccle- 
siology which the author does not, and which many of his 
readers will not, endorse. The thing here stressed and 
commended is not doctrine or church polity, but a pro- 
gram and a method. 


PROGRAM OF THE WALLACE, TEXAS, 
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
Adopted by the Congregation and Session 
October 29, 1916. 


A program is not a statement of past or present 
achievements but of ideals and plans for the future. We 
have not hesitated, therefore, to include in this program 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 93 


many things which we are far from having realized in 
practice, or from being able to put into practice for, 
perhaps, some time to come. To do any real and per- 
manent good even now, we believe that we must have a 
clear view of our whole work and of the higher ideals to- 
ward which we must always move if we are to fill our 
place in God’s world-program for the establishment of 
his Kingdom. One point after another, taking up each 
as we come to it and striving to realize as much as lies 
within our power at each stage of our progress, we hope 
and intend, as God gives us grace, to attain all of the 
points in this program.—(Philippians 3: 12-14.) 


I—WokrsHIP 


1. Public Worship—Regular morning worship every 
Sunday in the year the congregation coming consciously 
as one body into the presence of God, with 

Prayer expressing the sentiments of the whole con- 
gregation and actively participated in by all with heart 
and mind; 

Congregational singing a prominent and beautiful ele- 
ment in the services; 

Reading from the Scriptures for instruction and in- 
spiration, carefully selected and prepared by the minister 
and heard with attention and reverence by the con- 
gregation; 

Preaching which presents and interprets the whole 
counsel of God and applies it to our own individual and 
social needs in this particular rural community; 

An offering as a regular and important act of worship 
every Sunday; 

Observance of special days, with particular reference 
to country life; } 


94 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


Order, dignity and reverence pervading the whole ser- 
vice. 

Regular Young People’s Service every Sunday night, 
conducted by the Young People’s Society of Christian 
Endeavor, and including (except on the third Sunday 
of each month) a Young People’s Sermon by the pastor. 

Quarterly Observance of the Lord’s Supper as the su- 
preme expression of our union with Christ. 

Church Night every Wednesday night: 

A Social Half Hour, 

Half an hour for class and committee meetings, 

A half-hour Devotional Service in charge of the 
Adult Division of the Christian Endeavor. 

2. Family Worship—A Committee on Religion in the 
Home seeking to enroll all of our families in the “Presby- 
terian Home Circle” and cultivate the regular practice 
of family worship in the community. 

Training in Worship for the young. Care and im- 
provement of our buildings, grounds and equipment as a 
part of our worship, being an expression of the value we 
attach to our religion. 


II—EVANGELISM 


Our Avwm—Seeking nothing less than the full salva- 
tion of our whole community, we accept our responsi- 
bility not only toward the more settled and successful 
element of the population which naturally furnishes the 
chief support of any church, and which only selfishness 
or misunderstanding can keep out of the church, but also 
toward the unsettled and the unsuccessful: all who are 
not living as Sons in the Father’s House, whether be- 
cause of the bondage of specific personal sins, or be- 
cause of the general discouraging and hindering effect 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 95 


of misfortune; all who have no settled home and living 
for themselves and their families, and have not found 
their rightful place as Christian citizens in the life of the 
community; and especially the young people upon whom 
the future of our nation so largely depends. To all these 
we would bring our Christ and the life we find in him. 

Evangelistic Program—Exaltation of the Christian 
Life by preaching, teaching and personal conversation; 

By such beautiful, well-kept buildings and grounds, 
and such up-to-date equipment and methods as will 
inspire respect for our religion and attract people to it; 

By making our whole church work and our personal 
lives throughout so manifest the fullness of life which 
is in Christ Jesus that men beholding us may be drawn 
to him. 

Intercession for the unsaved in all our prayers, public 
and private. 

In the Sunday School—All work so planned and car- 
ried out as to give full understanding and appreciation 
of Christian truth and ideals and lead to personal ac- 
ceptance of Christ and consecration to the fullest Chris- 
tian life. 

Decision Day once a year, properly prepared for, with 
special invitation and opportunity for public confession 
of Christ. 

In the Young People’s Society—Not only Christian 
_ training and culture for the young people who are al- 
ready Christians, but constant endeavor to win those who 
are not, by: 

The exemplification in the Society of a wholesome, at- 
tractive type of Christian life for young people; 

The use of the Christian Endeavor pledge as a valid 
and valuable form of public confession for beginning the 
Christian life; 


96 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


A Lookout Committee, working along the usual lines 
of that Committee’s work in Christian Endeavor So- 
cleties; 

Personal work by the members—in the society, in their 
ordinary social relations, and in connection with the 
Special Season of Evangelistic Effort. 

A Special Season of Evangelistic Effort—occupying for 
the time being the chief attention of the whole church. 
The fullest possible cooperation of other churches earn- 
estly desired and invited. 

Preliminary surveys made by the Permanent Com- 
mittee, the organized classes of the Sunday school, and 
the Christian Endeavor, in cooperation one with another 
and with the representatives or committees of the other 
church (or churches). 

Personal work by the church people, organized for the 
purpose, preceding and during the season of special 
services. | 

Evangelistic services—conducted either by the pastor 
or by visiting evangelists, as may seem best at the time. 
Additional services, so far as possible, in nearby school 
houses, groves, etc., conducted .by lay workers and the 
young people. 

A Permanent Committee on Evangeltsm—seeking op- 
portunities to do personal work and foster it in the 
church throughout the year, supervising all the evan- 
gelistic efforts of the church, following up the work of 
the Special Season, and reporting regularly to the session 
concerning the need and progress of evangelistic work in 
the community. 


IlI—Retuicious Epucarion 


Our Atm—To give our children, young people and 
adults instruction and training, so graded and adapted 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 97 


that each pupil may increasingly effect a Christian ad- 
justment to the particular conditions and problems of his 
own developing life, in all the relations of the home, the 
community and the Kingdom of God. 

Educational Program—In the Pulpit. Sermons pre- 
senting not merely emotional exhortation, but material 
of permanent educational value. 

In the Home—A committee on religion in the home, 
organizing and directing the “Presbyterian Home Cir- 
cle,” and seeking to establish in our homes, not only 
family worship, but also conscientious and systematic 
religious training, including the use of good religious lit- 
erature, especially the Assembly Herald, the Presby- 
tertan Advance and the literature by our various Boards. 

In the Sunday School: 

Goal—To become the best country Sunday school in 
Texas, by increasing efficiency according to the modern | 
ideal of religious education. 

In May, 1916, we received the pennant awarded to 
Sunday schools which have attained the “Ten Point 
Interdenominational Standard” (Cradle Roll, Home De- 
partment, Organized Bible Classes in Secondary and 
Adult Divisions, Teacher Training, Graded Organization 
and Instruction, Missionary Instruction and Offering, 
Temperance Instruction, Definite Decision for Christ 
Urged, Offering for Denominational Sunday School 
Workers’ Conferences Regularly Held). We are now 
working toward the “Presbyterian Advance Standard” 
(A Council of Religious Education, Adequate Building 
and Equipment, Catechetical Instruction, Missionary 
Work, Vocational Guidance and Instruction, Officers and 
Teachers Trained, Systematic Giving, Bible Reading and 
Church Attendance, Parents’ Meeting and Religious 
Training in the Home, Community Extension Work). 


98 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


Graded Training in Worship; 
Graded Social Service adapted to our situation; 

Evangelism—oOur first concern in the Sunday school 
is the Christian culture of our own children, who ac- 
cording to the Presbyterian idea are members of the 
church, and are to be so brought up and trained. Our 
next responsibility is to those of all ages who have no 
church homes: these we must seek out, and offer to them 
the same privileges and opportunities that we give our 
own members. Thirdly, we extend a cordial welcome to 
all those of any other church who care to avail them- 
selves of the advantages of our Sunday school. 

In the Young People’s Society—Training in worship 
and service; 

Study classes on methods of Christian work, mis- 
sions, etc. 

Evangelism: 

Church Night—Special study classes connected with 
the midweek meeting. 

Pastor’s Instruction Class—A class conducted by the 
pastor and meeting during the week, e. g. after school 
Friday afternoons, for such part of the school year as 
may prove advisable. Instruction in the fundamental 
principles of religion, in preparation for church member- 
ship and intelligent participation in the life and work 
of the church. 

Special Conferences, Institutes, etc-—Occasional brief 
seasons of special study along specific lines, with well- 
qualified visitmg speakers and leaders. 

A Council of Religious Education—A central body, 
constituted according to the plan recommended by our 
denominational Department of Religious Education, di- 
recting all these varied agencies and coordinating them 
into an efficient, unified system of Religious Education; 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 99 


receiving reports from the different organizations, depart- 
ments and committees, and reporting regularly to the 
Session. 


IV—CoMMUNITY SERVICE 


Our Aim—To give “help for every community need”; 
to furnish “Christian leadership for every occasion and 
cooperation for every movement which contributes to 
the betterment of mankind”; to encourage and promote 
everything which helps to make the “(Community a per- 
manent home where no one is poor, strange or dissatis- 
fied; where men are taught to live and work in the 
country and to support their homes, their institutions 
and their community; where every generation transmits 
a richer heritage—in lands and institutions and tradi- © 
tions—than it received; where there is satisfaction in 
the present and a faith in the future to inspire with a 
Confidence of Eternal Life.’ (From “A Platform for 
Country Churches,” issued by the Presbyterian Country 
Church Work). 

Program of Service—Moral Reform, Temperance, So- 
cial Purity, etc. 

Education—Training for rural life in the public school; 
lectures, reading circles, clubs, institutes; literature on 
rural problems and our relation to them; Sunday-school 
library (over 500 volumes at present). 

Better Farming and Home-making—Government and 
college lectures and demonstrators; clubs; a demonstra- 
tion farm of about five acres belonging to the church 
and managed by a committee of the session in consulta- 
tion with the federal demonstration agent and the agri- 
cultural college; emphasis in sermons on the religious 
aspects of farming and home-making. 


100 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


Economic Problems—Land ownership and tenantry; 
banking and credit, co-operation in production, buying 
and selling; good roads; lectures, discussions, and (where 
needed) the organization of clubs or associations. 

Health—Sanitation, hygiene, care of children; lectures, 
study, literature. 

Relief of sickness and misfortune—Visiting; a Local 
Benevolent Fund administered by the session in ac- 
cordance with recommendations from the organized Sun- 
day-school classes, the Christian Endeavor or individ- 
uals, and raised as a regular item on the budget. 

Recreation—A playground belonging to the church, 
with facilities for organized: play; athletics; celebration 
of holidays; provision for social intercourse and enjoy- 
ment as a regular part of the Church Night program; 
music—singing class meeting weekly at the manse; dra- 
matic entertainments, recitations, socials, games, refresh- 
‘ments conducted by the Social Committee of the Young 
People’s Society; all these events and activities con- 
ducted not for the church alone, but for the whole com- 
munity. 

Beautiful homes, grounds, roadsides, etc-—Education 
and organized effort according to opportunity and need. 


Our Poticy In ALL THE ABOVE ACTIVITIES FOR 
CoMMUNITY SERVICE 


Knowledge of conditions and needs—Community sur- 
veys “To discover neglected individuals and families, to 
ascertain the conditions which determine its (the 
Church’s) work, and to learn what movements are en- 
titled to its guidance, interest and support” (Vogt: The 
Church and Country Life, p. 117). Findings tabulated 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 101 


and made public, avoiding any violation of private con- 
fidence. 

Cooperation between churches in surveys and all 
community enterprises. We pledge our earnest desire 
and readiness for such cooperation in every possible way. 

Cooperation with other agencies—the public schools, 
and all organizations or institutions working for the 
above or related ends. Public meetings in conjunction 
with such organizations, and active cooperation in ser- 
vice. 

Division of function with other agencies—avoidance 
of overlapping and duplication of effort, by personal ad- 
justment on the part of the individuals who are con- 
nected with both the church and the other agencies, and 
by confining the work of the church wherever some other 
agency is in the field to education, public encouragement 
and furnishing leaders and workers. Our pastor is the 
servant of the whole community; he will gladly partici- 
pate in any enterprise for the public welfare, and the 
church gladly consents to such use of a reasonable por- 
tion of his time and efforts. 


V—WorRLD SERVICE 


We proudly recognize our position as not only a local 
organization, but a part of the great Presbyterian de- 
nomination and the whole church of Christ. We follow 
the methods and forms of organization of our denomina- 
tion and of the great world-movements of the interde- 
nominational or undenominational character (such as 
the Christian Endeavor). 

Gifts to Benevolences—in church, Sunday school, and 
Christian Endeavor. 


102 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


Missionary Education—in the pulpit, the Sunday 
school, the Young People’s Society, Church Night and 
special conferences and institutes. 

Education in the work of the Board—Sermons, litera- 
ture, the Pastor’s Instruction Class and special classes. 

Dedication of our sons and daughters and prayer for 
them. 

Vocational Guidance—through the pulpit, the home, 
the Sunday school and the Young People’s Society. 

VI—ADMINISTRATION 

Form of Organzation—Established Presbyterian 
usage accepted, with the constant endeavor to follow the 
developing plans and recommendations of our great de- 
nominational agencies. 

Minister—A regularly installed, full time, resident 
pastor, living in an attractive manse belonging to the 
church and located on the church grounds. 

Session—The central governing body; regular monthly 
meetings; written reports from the heads of organiza- 
tions, departments and committees. 

Congregational meetings—Annually ; reports on finan- 
ces, projects, etc.; reports of committees, organizations, 
etc., as directed by the session; information for the 
whole congregation concerning the church’s work, and 
opportunity for expressions of opinions and desires. 

Permanent Committees—In charge of the chief de- 
partments of the work (e. g. the Council of Religious 
Education, The Committee on Evangelism, The Commit- 
tee on the Demonstration Farm, etc.) ; regular written 
reports to the session. 

Special Seasons—for concentrating the attention and 
effort of the church along specific lines, e. g. Evangelism. 

Cooperation with other churches and agencies for spe- 
cial projects—through informal temporary groups, e. g. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 103 


committees from the organized Sunday-school classes, the 
Christian Endeavor or the session. 

Visitation—of the whole membership and field system- 
atically by the pastor, elders, Committee on Religion 
in the Home, and Home Department of the Sunday 
school for the purpose of cultivating Christian fellow- 
ship, discovering and keeping in touch with conditions 
and needs, and bringing spiritual and material aid; a 
Social Visitation of the whole congregation twice every 
year, following the plan of the Presbytery United Move- 
ment; surveys in connection with special enterprises. 

Financial Policy—The Every Member plan, with bud- 
get, annual canvass, subscriptions for local church sup- 
port and benevolences, weekly duplex envelop offerings 
as a regular part of the morning worship, quarterly 
statements from the treasurer for each subscriber, and 
regular reports to the session and the congregation, sys- 
tematic preaching of the consecration of substance and 
information concerning needs and opportunities for giv- 
ing. 


A PRAYER 


Our Heavenly Father, we commit ourselves and this 
plan of work to thee. It is thy work, and thou only 
canst give us the power to accomplish what we have 
undertaken. Bestow upon us now that power; whatever 
is misguided in our plans do thou overrule; whatever 
is lacking inspire us to supply. Above all, we beseech 
thee, give us that spirit of love for thee and for our 
neighbors which alone can put life into our work; and 
keep vivid before our minds and strong in our hearts the 
great purpose of all, that thy name may be hallowed, thy 
Kingdom come, thy will’ be done on earth as it is in 


104 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


heaven. In the name of thine Anointed, our Savior 
we ask it. AMEN. 

A mere casual reading of this program will not meet 
the case. The author refuses to be satisfied with his 
reader if he does not now turn back and give this pro- 
gram a careful, prayerful step-by-step study, seeking to 
find in it suggestions that will help in launching a worthy 
comprehensive challenging program for his own church. 
Let us bear in mind always that a program is a “state- 
ment of ideals and plans for the future” and that it may 
require months and even years to bring the ideals set 
forth down to the practical.realm of the real. But it has 
been true from the beginning of time that every practical 
achievement in the sphere of the real had its birth in 
the realm of the ideal. 

It seems to me that if I were pastor of a country 
church I should master by careful study, the foregoing 
church program. I should then make such changes in it 
as would be necessary to adapt it to my local situation. 
I should then ask my church to adopt it as the program 
that the church would deliberately seek to carry forward 
in the community. I should then have a printed copy 
put into the hands of every member of the church and ~ 
keep constantly before them the challenge to live up to 
that ideal. 

It will not meet the case for the country preacher to 
say that this all looks pretty on paper but cannot be 
worked in actual practice. I have chosen and repro- 
duced this particular program because it has worked in 
actual performance in an open country church. With 
necessary local adaptations and with the leadership of an 
intelligent and enthusiastic pastor it will work in any 
country church. 


CHAPTER IX 


A STEP IN THE RIGHT 
DIRECTION 


For many years President W. B. Bizzell of the Texas 
A. and M. College has been much interested in the wel- 
fare of the rural church. Being himself a Baptist deacon 
and a product of Baylor University, he has recognized 
intuitively that a State College can have no direct hand 
and certainly no authoritative or even modifying voice 
in the affairs of a church. As president of a State Col- 
lege he has all along maintained as axiomatic the idea 
that his college has no place in shaping either the the- 
ology or the polity of a church. 

But he has at the same time very properly maintained 
that since the college is so directly concerned with rural 
life there should be some informal, non-official, and yet 
- very sympathetic and practical cooperation between the 
agencies of the college and the various denominational 
Boards, believing that in this way each could be helpful 
to the other in the matter of developing a wholesome 
rural life. 

In the summer of 1923, he wrote: “The church has 
the key to the most vexed rural problems. 

“Since both the church bodies and the A. and M. Col- 
lege of Texas have definite responsibilities regarding 
country life, and since each has a peculiar contribution 
of its own to make toward the solution of the problems 

[ 105 ] 


106 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


confronting this field, it would seem the part of wisdom 
for them to counsel together, from time to time, as to 
the most effective means of reaching common ends. 

“A feeling of need for the aid which the churches can 
give in making the country life program of the college 
the best possible, prompted the Texas A. and M. Col- 
lege to arrange for a Country Ministers’ Conference at 
College Station, July 16-28, 1923, and for a series of 
institutes at various points in the State during the fol- 
lowing weeks.” 

This conference was held according to announcement. 
As one of the results of its deliberations a committee 
was appointed to prepare an address to the people of 
Texas on this very vital subject. The report of this com- 
mittee has been published as a Bulletin of the A. and M. 
College, and because of its many helpful suggestions I 
am, with the consent of the College, reproducing that 
bulletin verbatim in this volume. It is fair to say that 
most of the matter of this report was furnished by Dr. 
W. E. Garnett, being read and approved, of course, by 
the other four members of the committee. In my opinion 
it will amply repay thoughtful reading and even careful 
study. The report is as follows: 


Tue Function, Poticy AND ProcRAM OF THE CountTRY CHURCH. 





Report of the Committee of the Rural Ministers’ Conference, 
A. and M. College of Texas, July 16-26, 1923 





The Committee wishes at the outset to acknowledge its debt to 
the many contributors to the thought presented in this report. 

The Committee began its work on the assumption that at 
present there are three aspects of the task of the country church 
in Texas that need stating: 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 107 


1. A definition of the function of the country church, in order 
to gain if possible a clear notion of what the fundamental work 
of the church is, especially in relation to the activities of other 
social institutions and agencies. 

2. An outline of a general policy for the country church as a 
whole in trying to carry out its function. 

3. A suggestive program. 


The Function of the Country Church. 


God’s great purpose for men is the salvation and the highest 
possible development of each personality and of the human race 
as a whole. It is essential to this growth that men shall hold 
adequate ideals of character and life. The Christian believes 
that these ideals must spring from a clear appreciation of God’s 
purpose, and from a consuming desire to reproduce the spirit and 
life of Jesus. 

Therefore, the function of the country church is to create, to 
maintain, and to enlarge both individual and community ideals, 
under the inspiration and guidance of the Christian motive and 
teaching; and to help rural people to inculcate these ideals in 
personal, in family, and in community life; in agricultural and 
industrial effort; in civic activities; and in all social relation- 
ships. 

The church must bring men to God, must lead in the tasks of 
building God’s Kingdom on Earth. 


The Work of the Country Church. 


The Committee has divided the work of the country church 
into the following headings: 

1. Knowledge of its field. 

2. Preaching and worship. 

3. Religious education. 

4. The church ministering to all the people. 

5. The church ministering to all the needs of the people. 

6. Cooperation among the churches. 

Under each one of these headings there is: 


1. A Statement of General Principles. 


Intended to apply to Christianity as a whole, or to any church. 
These principles are expected to be broad enough on the one 


108 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


hand to meet the need of general religious activities, and on 
the other hand practical enough to serve as a guide for local 
church work. 


2. A Program for the Local Church. 


This is by no means complete, but is a list of specific things 
that might be done by any church. Probably no one church 
will do all of them, but every church can do some of them. 
Each church should adapt its program to the needs and -condi- 
tions of its own community; but should always test the program 
in the light of a broad policy. 

In addition to the above, there are included in the report, 
suggestions to governing church boards, State conventions, asso- 
ciations, and conferences, which if adopted, would greatly facili- 
tate the execution of the policies and programs herein out- 
lined. 


I. KwNow.tepce or Its FIe.p. 


A. Principles. 


a. Country church leaders, both preachers and laymen, should 
have a clear understanding of the fundamental aspects of the 
rural problem, and should broadly define the relationship of the 
church to that problem. 

b. The country church should make a survey of its field, to 
learn what movements are entitled to its guidance, interest, and 
support, to discover neglected individuals, families and fields of 
social effort, to ascertain the conditions which determine its work. 
Two or more churches serving the same community should co- 
operate in such a survey. The main results should be made 
public, but the rights of privacy should be duly guarded. In 
making such surveys, churches should cooperate with other 
institutions and agencies. 


B. Program for the Local Church. 


1. Hold county or district conferences of rural preachers to 
study rural problems. 

2. Have county agents arrange for agricultural speakers before 
church gatherings. 

3. Promote community surveys,—using standard survey blanks, 
such as those obtainable from several church boards, and the 
A. and M. College. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 109 


4. Encourage the study of survey results by the community. 
Support constructive plans for promoting desirable conditions and 
tendencies and checking undesirable ones as indicated by the 
community survey. Encourage all community organizations to 
cooperate in this work. 

5. Urge the reading of literature bearing on country life. See 
to it that public libraries, church libraries, and school libraries 
have a good selection of books, bulletins, and magazines on this 
subject, and push actively their circulation. 

Every country minister is especially urged to have the follow- 
ing: 

1. Publications on country church work of his own Home 
Mission Board and similar publications by other denominational 
boards. 

2. The following Texas A. and M. College publications: 

a. Extension Service Bulletin B-64. “Ancient and Modern 

Agriculture.” (Agricultural illustrations from the 

Bible.) 

b. Annual report of the Director of the Extension Service. 
c. List of publications of the Extension Service. 

d. List of publications of the Experiment Station. 

e. Rural Sociology circulars: 

(1) No. 2. Socially Significant Rural Conditions. 

(2) No. 3. A statement of what constitutes a well- 
rounded community and suggestions on com- 
munity building. 

(3) No. 4. Directions for an Educational Community 
Fair. 


II. PrReAcHING AND WorSsHIP. 


A. Principles. 


The country church should foster private and public worship 
of God. Through its preaching, it should bring a ringing spiritual 
message of salvation to the community, and interpret the gospel 
for the uplift of motive and the transformation and development 
of character. 

In services and worship the church should inspire and inculcate 
ideals of righteousness, of charity of judgment, of social jus- 
tice, and of social responsibility. On all occasions it should 
recognize and meet the responsibility of its obligations as a 


110 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


leader and a promoter of harmonious, unified, constructive effort 
for community welfare along all lines. 


B. Program. 


1. Preaching every Sunday in every field. 

2. Emphasis on congregational singing. 

3. Topics and texts with rural setting and connected with 
local social conditions and problems. 

4. Religious use of special days with applications to local 
environment: Harvest Home, Rural Life Sundays, Thanksgiving, 
and Mothers’ Day. 


III. Retiaious Epvucation. 


A. Principles. 


The country church should develop definite means of religious 
and moral education, which interprets personal and social duty 
in terms of rural life, and which applies what is learned in actual 
social service. To this end the pulpit, the home, the Sunday 
School, and church societies should definitely cooperate. 


B. Program. 


1. Graded Bible instruction for children adapted to the average 
country Sunday school. 

2. Systematic adult Bible study with social implications em- 
phasized. 

Special unit short courses on applied Christian citizenship, 
family problems and child welfare studied by organized adult 
church groups, such as, Bible classes, missionary societies, and 
laymen’s clubs. 


IV. Tue Cuurcu MINISTERING TO ALL THE PEOPLE. 


A. Principles. 


While the country church should minister to the efficient and 
successful, to the end that it may mold the community through 
competent leadership, it should also minister with special zeal 
to the ineffective, the poor, and the degenerate; for they also 
belong to Christ. The rapidly increasing instability of the 
rural population lays upon the church the special duty of 
religious and social helpfulness to the tenant family and the 
hired man. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 111 


B. Program. 

1. Encourage community service projects by church clubs and 
groups. 

2. Utilize existing women’s organizations for larger and more 
effective local service. 

3. Give public advocacy to various forms of social service, 
such as clean-up days, community picnics, play festivals, town 
improvement, Arbor Day, beautifying the cemetery or the com- 
mon, etc. 

4, Preach the adequacy of the country as a life investment. 

5. Make church sociables community affairs, if possible, wel- 
coming all. 

6. Avoid unnecessarily multiplying community groups Saupe 
church institutional pride. 


V. Tue Cuurcy MInIstertnc To ALL THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE. 


A. Principles. 


The country church should regard itself as the servant of the 
entire community, and should be deeply concerned with all 
legitimate interests and agencies of the community. It should 
give them support and promotion as there may be opportunity 
or need. It should suggest and inspire rather than instigate 
and supervise; but it may undertake any new service for 
which there is not other provision. 

Cooperation with Other Agencies. The church should recog- 
nize a division of functions in the community, and should co- 
operate with other institutions and organizations. Such adjust- 
ments are made individually for the most part, but by public 
advocacy and by educational methods the church should exert 
its collective influence for all ends that help to upbuild the 
country. 

Governing church bodies and the local minister should recog- 
nize that all agencies working for constructive community build- 
ing are allies of the church and should receive the church’s active 
cooperation. The county agent’s contacts and attitude toward 
country life make him a valuable counsellor to the minister, and 
vice versa. 

Experience has shown that success or failure in building the 
country church on a permanent basis is parallel with the suc- 


112 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


cess or the failure of the economic and intellectual life of the 
community in which the church is located. The county agent 
is the key man to the economic situation, while the home agent, 
the county superintendent of schools, and local teachers have the 
key to the educational situation. If the minister and church 
members give these public service workers their cordial support 
and cooperation, they will at the same time be building per- 
manency into their own religious work. 


B. Program. 


Community movements should be aided by active cooperation 
or instigated as the need may be, for such ends as the follow- 
ing: 

1. Temperance—wherever the community is suffering from in- 
temperance or lawlessness; a campaign for law enforcement, 
Sabbath observance, etc. 

2. Public health and sanitation. 

3. Good roads. 

4. Education for rural life and consolidated schools. 

5. Intellectual development by means of libraries, lectures, 
reading circles, clubs, and similar agencies. 

6. Better farming and better farm homes, with special stress 
upon the extension activities of Agricultural College and the 
State University. 

7. Beauty of village, roadside and private grounds. 

8. Celebration of religious and patriotic holidays, observance 
of old home week, and production of historical pageants. 

9. Education of the people in vision, by preaching on com- 
munity planning. 

10. Establishment of a supervised social center or community 
house. 

11. Local federation for rural progress and other community 
programs. 

12. Promotion of cooperation among farmers in their pro- 
duction, buying and selling, for civic purposes, and for dealing 
with such questions as the tenancy problem. 

13. Provision for public recreation. 

a. The church must recognize that the tendency to play 
among all peoples is an instinct which can be guided 
into proper channels, or allowed to run riot. This 
play instinct affords the rural church an opportunity 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 113 


to gather up wandering, aimless forces in the com- 
munity and bring them into concerted action and 
unified effort, if the rural church and the rural school 
and other constructive forces will enter and assume 
control. 

b. The church can carry out a program of character 
building and community building through its own 
initiative and direction, or in cooperation with 
other agencies, by such forms of recreational life as: 

(1) Wholesome games. 

(2) Building up a community playground. 
(3) Community fellowship gatherings. 

(4) Community fairs. 

(5) Competitive athletics. 

(6) Competitive singing. 

(7) Fostering clubs for music, debate, reading. 


VI. CoopzrRATION AMONG THE CHURCHES. 


A. Principles. 


The whole program of the rural church will remain at a 
standstill unless there is concerted and aggressive action on the 
part of the governing church bodies, the ministers, and the 
leading laymen of the church to the end: that a resident minis- 
try be secured for country churches; that the rural ministry be 
adequately trained for well-rounded leadership in country com- 
munities; and that length of pastorates be increased through the 
provision of salaries commensurate with ability and _ service. 
When there is such concerted action, we can confidently expect 
an end to the ill-paid, ill-trained, thinly spread ministry with at- 
tendant handicaps to community cooperate effort. 

Where the village or town church uses only a part of the 
time of the pastor, the contiguous open country churches should 
be encouraged to use the same pastor, thus giving solidarity of 
field. 

The young people’s societies of the town church should 
occasionally put on a fine program in the country churches and 
vice versa, both as a matter of encouragement and demonstra- 
tion as well as for the cultivation of fellowship and mutual 
understanding. 


114 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


B. Program. 


1. Union meetings for religious purposes, song services, thanks- 
giving, etc. 

2. Cooperative surveys. 

3. Evangelistic campaigns on the cooperative basis, preceded 
by a survey and followed by effective organized work for develop- 
ment and growth. 

4. Cooperation to promote the best inter-racial and social group 
relationship. 

5. Union campaigns on moral issues like law enforcement. 

6. Community projects for various forms of community wel- 
fare, school improvement, health improvement and recreation. 

7. Cooperative boys’ and girls’ clubs. 

8. Cooperative play festivals, Christmas trees, etc. 

9. Cooperation in athletic contests. 


SuGcEestions To GENERAL CHurcH Bopiss. 


A. Principles. 


To the various church boards, State and district conventions, 
associations and conferences the following suggestions and recom- 
mendations are respectfully made: 

It is the genius of Christianity to be concerned for the whole 
life of humanity. Religion is the oldest and most continuous 
rural institution, and therefore is charged with the greatest re- 
sponsibility. It has the key to the solution of the most vexed 
rural problems. 

The church has potentially the most efficient machinery for 
influencing the whole life of the community. If the church 
shows interest in the success of other worthy phases of com- 
munity life, these in turn will show an interest in the church. 

The highest success of the rural church depends upon the 
agricultural, economic, intellectual, and social progress of the 
country. The time has come for ministers and other rural life 
agencies and institutions to take council more frequently on the 
country church and rural life as a whole. 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 115 


B. Program. 
The following program is suggested: 


1. Official approval of this report by various church boards, 
conventions, associations, and conferences. 


2. Publications of the report, if officially approved, as a cir- 
cular by each denomination, and circulation through regular 
denominational channels. 


3. Supplying the State institutions with lists of its rural min- 
isters by each denominational headquarters, in order that they 
may be sent literature on rural life subjects from time to time, 
also placing county agents and other rural workers on denomina- 
tional mailing lists for their literature on country church ques- 
tions. 


4, Frequent mutual aid in district conferences; country life 
speakers on programs of church conferences, and church backing 
to rural life meetings sponsored by agricultural workers. 


5. Attractive rural life exhibits at annual church conventions 
and conferences. 


6. A more vigorous policy of information on rural problems 
through church papers. Prepare and distribute to each pastor 
pamphlets which tell stories of successful country churches in 
the denomination. 


7. Appointment by each denominational body of representatives 
to an annual conference with agricultural workers to consider 
plans and means of mutual assistance in a constructive rural 
program. 


The first of these conferences to be held at College Station, 
January 8, 9, 1924. 


In making this report the committee wishes to emphasize the 
fact that rural workers of State institutions have no religious 
propaganda to put over, and in their activities in the country 
church field do not mean to interfere in any way with denomi- 
national views and denominational machinery. Their only pur- 
pose is to render such service as may be possible in their 


116 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


legitimate sphere, which includes matters pertaining to more 
satisfying country life. 


(Signed) JerF D. Ray, Chairman, 
Professor of Homiletics and Rural Church Work, Southwes- 
tern Baptist Theological Seminary, Seminary Hill, Texas. 


JoHN A. SICELOFF, 
Pastor Methodist Episcopal Church, Belton, Texas. 


W. B. Buizzett, 
President Texas A. and M. College, College Station, Texas. 


T. O. Watton, 
Director Extension Service, Texas A. and M. College, 
College Station, Texas. 


W. E. GARNETT, 
Professor of Rural Sociology, Texas A. and M. College, 
College Station, Texas. 


CHAPTER X 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER AND 
HIS MATERIAL EQUIPMENT 


In other parts of this volume emphasis has been laid 
upon the necessity of a better educated rural ministry. 
We have glanced, with confessed humiliation, at his em- 
barrassment and inefficiency on account of his lack of 
intellectual equipment. But the material equipment 
which the country preacher is to have for his work is 
also of vital importance. Better material equipment is 
such a preeminent need in the work of the country 
preacher that we can well afford to give an entire chap- 

ter to its consideration. 

The outstanding item of material equipment, of course, 
will be the church building. 

While the situation is still far from satisfactory it is 
certainly true that in recent years there has been a 
marked improvement in the matter of country church 
buildings. If one wished to speculate as to the reason 
for this advance several things could be mentioned. 

In the first place one might mention a new prosperity 
that has come to the farmer. He has more money than 
formerly on account of advance in prices of his products. 
If he replies that because of a corresponding advance in 
what he has to buy he has no greater net profit than 
formerly, the answer is that the statement is not true. 
The farmer does make more clear money now than he 


did twenty years ago. But even if he does not clear 
ok ae [117] 


118 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


more he receives three times as much money in return 
for his labor as he did then. And it is a well-known fact 
that a man with a $2,000 gross income will give more 
money to his church than if he had a $500 gross income 
though the net profits are the same. 

But a second thing that has given a new impulse to 
rural church building is the new outlook due to travel. 
Due to the automobile and other improved methods of 
transportation the farmer travels more than formerly. 
In his journeyings he sees what other communities are 
doing in the matter of better church buildings, imbibes 
the spirit and imparts it to his own community. But 
another very potent influence making for better rural 
church buildings is the fact that our country churches 
are taking on new activities demanding better equipment. 
The modern movement for a graded Sunday school and 
for taking care of the social side of church life is demon- 
strating the inadequacy of the old one-room building 
and making an imperious demand for a new house adap- 
tive to the new activities of the church. 

But perhaps the most potent influence in this field is 
the interest taken in it and the intelligent work done 
for it by the various denominational boards. In 1915 
the Methodist Episcopal Church established what they 
call a Bureau of Architecture. In 1920 the American 
Baptist Publication Society, together with the Baptist 
Home Mission Society, established a Department of 
Architecture. About the same time the Baptist Sunday 
School Board appointed Dr. P. E. Burroughs to give much 
of his time to the question of church architecture. The 
Presbyterians (U. S. A.), who are perhaps the pioneers 
in modern rural church activities, are giving special at- 
tention to this question of rural church architecture. 
Doubtless other denominations are or soon will be doing 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 119 


the same work. All these agencies have published books 
and tracts and folders on the subject, and are prepared 
to furnish practically free suggested church plans to meet 
any situation. This intelligent and concentrated atten- 
tion to the matter on the part of our denominational 
boards has resulted in a very perceptible revival of in- 
terest in better rural church buildings. 

But, to take another step, let us consider some things 
that should characterize the country church building. 
1. Strength and Stability. 

In the first place it pays. Our Catholic friends, with 
all their faults, set us a good business example in this 
matter. Whatever one may say of their style of archi- 
tecture they at least build for permanence, and do not 
waste money on cheap flimsy temporary buildings. The 
Baptist meeting house at New Liberty, Kentucky (an 
open country church), was built in 1854, and is appar- 
ently as good now as the day it was built. It is true the 


- modern church life has demanded the addition of some 


wings, but the original building seems good for another 
hundred years. Building a house like that was a far 
better investment than a cheaper affair that would have 
to be replaced two or three times in a generation. 

But another reason for such a building is that it 
teaches a moral lesson. Let a group of young people 
grow up under the shadow of a permanent, well-built, 
stable house of worship, and unconsciously it will have 
its effect upon their character. Without knowing it they 
are influenced to set store by the things that are perma- 
nent. And furthermore, they are unconsciously led to 
regard religion as one of the permanent assets of life. 

But besides being a good investment, and _ besides 
teaching a moral lesson, a strong, stable, dignified 
church building will be a drawing card to attract people 


120 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


to all the services of the church. Other things being 
equal the church with such a building will be better at- 
tended than the one with a cheap temporary shack. 

2. Beauty. Paraphrasing the words of a distinguished 
statesman, “Millions for defense, but not a cent for trib- 
ute,’ I recently heard a member of a church building 
committee say, “Thousands for utility, but not a cent 
for beauty.” He was a fine man but wrong here. Cer- 
tainly other needed qualities:should not be sacrificed 
upon the altar of beauty, but that is the best house of 
worship, other elements being cared for, that is most 
characterized by beauty. A beautiful house of worship 
will have its wholesome influence upon the esthetic na- 
ture of every person in the community. 

3. Utility. The test of utility for a church building 
would be one thing, while for any other building it 
would be quite another. A building that would be 
ideally useful as an opera house might, and no doubt 
would be, the abomination of desolation as a church 
edifice. In the matter of utility there are four things at 
least that every building committee should keep in 
mind. (1) The preaching service. The public preach- 
ing of the gospel is the preeminent task of the church. 
The first thought, therefore, of a building committee 
and architect should be that of a building with an audi- 
torium in which the preacher can be easily seen and 
heard by all the people assembled. This would elimi- 
nate all posts and pillars, all nooks and crannies, all 
turns and angles, that would interfere with hearing and 
seeing the preacher. (2) The choir. Since gospel song 
is coming to have so large a place in our public worship 
it is a short-sighted policy to build a meeting house with- 
out adequate provision for the choir. In country churches 
it is difficult to get together a sufficient number of musi- 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER -121 


cal people to make a choir. To recognize their value 
enough to make some adjustment in the building by 
which the choir would be enabled to render its best ser- 
vice would be such an encouragement to the musically 
inclined that it would greatly help in the matter of re- 
cruiting a choir. As to the location of the choir, those 
who have given the matter most attention think it should 
be immediately behind the preacher, on a level with the 
pulpit floor, with each row a few inches higher than the 
one immediately in front. This is no doubt the best 
place for the choir, the one objection being that with 
churches practicing immersion it makes it difficult to ar- 
range for a satisfactory baptistry. For this reason it 
seems to me that it would be best to have the choir plat- 
form to the right or left of the preacher. The one thing 
insisted upon is that rural church buildings shall be so 
constructed as to give formal and sensible recognition to 
the importance of the gospel in song. (8) The Sunday 
school. The twentieth century rural meeting house that 
does not make some definite provision for the needs of the 
modern Sunday school is regarded by thoughtful people 
as a travesty in architecture. It is freely admitted that 
country churches cannot, in many cases, make the elab- 
orate provision possible in wealthier town churches, but 
it is certainly true that most of them could, and if they 
realized its importance, would make better provision for 
the teaching in the Sunday school. Every church build- 
ing ought to provide at least five separate rooms for the 
Sunday school, viz: (a) an assembly room—(which may 
well be the church auditorium); (b) a room for begin- 
ners; (c) for primaries; (d) for juniors; (e) for inter- 
mediates. To this should be added as many classrooms as 
possible, providing as far as practicable separate class- 
rooms for the classes in the Senior and Adult Depart- 


122 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


ments. (4) Social life. It is to be hoped that the church 
will never degenerate into a mere party-giving, fun-mak- 
ing, lunch-serving institution. Let us hope that the 
church, will always be a great spiritual dynamo set for 
the serious business of saving souls and building charac- 
ter. But since man is by nature a gregarious animal—a 
creature of highly developed social instincts, the church 
is dim-eyed that does not see in this wide field an oppor- 
tunity of service and as far as possible furnish physical 
equipment for it. How far a country church could go in 
this matter would depend upon a good many things, par- 
ticularly its financial ability. But every country preacher 
ought to capitalize for Christ and his cause, the social 
instincts of his people, and he ought to utilize to this end 
every means that consecrated common sense could in- 
vent. If he could possibly do so he ought to have a com- 
munity hall on the church grounds, preferably not a part 
of the church building, which might become a center of 
much of the social life of the community, and particu- 
larly of his own people. 3 
4. Comfort. It is not an exaggeration to say that there 
are, or were, many people with the notion that the house 
of God ought not to be made comfortable, arguing that 
a good Christian ought to rejoice in the opportunity to 
suffer for Christ’s sake. These friends did not have dis- 
crimination enough to see that to suffer for Christ’s sake, 
and to be a fool for the want of sense are two very dif- 
ferent things. Intelligent people are now coming to the 
belief that the house of God ought to be not only the 
most attractive but the most comfortable building in the 
neighborhood. In the first place it should have light. 
The average country church does not suffer for want of 
light by day. That abomination is reserved for city 
churches. Where the country church falls down is in 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 125 


the matter of illumination for night meetings. There 
are so many new methods of making real lights that a 
church is almost criminal if it persists in using the old 
kerosene lamp. 

A second necessity to comfort is ventilation. A church 
building, especially in the South, should have all the 
Southern exposure possible and as many windows as 
possible in the South side. This is particularly true 
where electric fans and other artificial methods of venti- 
lation are impracticable. This question should be care- 
fully considered when deciding what shall be the posi- 
tion of the house on the lot. I visited a church not long 
since where one of the deacons, showing me through the 
building, boasted in a semi-jocular way that the house 
was “built without clerical interference.” I said, “I 
thought so. If a preacher had planned it he would at 
least have had enough judgment to provide some open- 
ings on the south side of the auditorium.” 

A third thing is heat. In my early days I attended 
a church which had been worshiping in a house for 
twenty-five years in which there had never been a fire, 
having not even a flue for a stove-pipe. The brethren 
made a log fire out in front of the house. The congrega- 
tion stood around that till the parson was ready to preach 
and all went in and shivered through the service. I never 
heard of anybody being especially blessed on those cold 
days. The old-fashioned stove is not a very satisfactory 
way to heat a church building. Those who are near it 
“burn up,” and those who are remote “freeze.” It does 
not matter much in what part of the room you place it, 
you will wish you had put it somewhere else. Near the 
platform, under the preacher’s nose is perhaps the most 
common, and at the same time, the most abominable 
place to put it. Steam, or hot water, or even hot air 


124 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


heat is impracticable in most country churches. But 
there are many modern methods of distributing the heat 
over a large room, the price of which would be within 
the reach of any average country church. No heating 
device ought to be installed in a country church till the 
most thorough investigation of modern methods has been 
made. It would be well to take the matter up with the 
architectural department of one of the leading denomina- 
tions. These people have all the latest information on 
the subject. 

A fourth thing desired for comfort is water—running 
water in the building. This is not as impracticable as 
it seems. If a shallow well can be had in the church lot 
a windmill and metal cistern will more than supply the 
demand. Or if the well is impracticable the metal cis- 
tern fed with rains from the roof of the church building 
will furnish “much water.” This running water in the 
house idea is especially important to those denomina- 
tions which would desire to have a baptistry in the build- 
ing. 

Having said this much about the country church 
building let us think for a moment of some things that 
ought to go along with it. 

Coordinate equipment. (a) A well-kept lawn. It 
cannot be a very wholesome recommendation of religion 
to see a church lawn looking like a dumping ground. A 
little united effort wisely directed would not only rid the 
lot of unsightly debris, but would in a short time beau- 
tify it with trees and shrubs and flowers. (b) A sign 
easily seen and read from the road, telling the name and 
denomination of the church. How many times has the 
reader of this line passed a country church and wished 
in vain to know its name and denomination? I have 
seen thousands of country churches but I have never yet 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 125 


seen one with enterprise enough to put out a sign that 
even the passing stranger might know who it was and 
what it was. (c) A pastor’s home. A country church, 
if it ever expects to have full-time preaching and a resi- 
dent pastor must, almost of necessity, have a pastor’s 
home. This is more important in the country than in 
the city. In town houses are built to rent. Not so in the 
country. A decent house for rent, apart from the farm 
land, in the country is a rarity. Often the preacher 
would move on his field, but he can get no house to live 
in. My observation is that a country or village church 
with a decent pastor’s home has little trouble getting a 
good pastor located on the field, and that those without 
such equipment find locating a preacher on the field im- 
practicable if not impossible. (d) A bit of “Mother 
Earth.” The country church ought not to be satisfied 
with a quarter of an acre of ground, more or less, do- 
nated by some brother from the corner of his field. The 
- ideal modern country church will have not less than 
five, and preferably ten, acres of ground. The rural pas- 
tor’s home will demand considerable ground for chick- 
ens, pigs, cow, garden and even a little feed for stock. 
Beside this there will be needed space for parking con- 
veyances. Beside this why should not the church furnish 
ground for the athletic sports of its young people—thus 
creating a point of contact between the church and the 
growing youth. (e) A Ford. In my youth everybody 
knew that a country preacher could not do his work un- 
less he had a pony to ride. If I did not have one, and 
was not able to buy one, the church managed some way 
to get one for me. The Ford car is the twentieth century 
country preacher’s pony, without which it is a practical 
impossibility for him to do his work. When the meet- 
ing house and the pastor’s home are built the budget 


126 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


should call for a garage with a Ford in it ready to greet 
the pastor on his arrival. 

But some country deacon reading this chapter is say- 
ing, “That is all a beautiful theory. The trouble is the 
theorizing parson is asking us to bite off more than we 
can chew.” But let us see about that? Of course, it 
cannot all be done in a minute. If a man is going to eat 
a Juicy beefsteak he does not take it all in his mouth at 
once. The bane of our country churches is that they are 
not led to fix a great program and work to it. They live 
from hand to mouth with a skip-hop-and-jump program 
that has no eye to the future and cannot, therefore, make 
intelligent, consecutive, permanent progress. But what 
is this supposedly impossible thing I have proposed? 
Here it is. (1) Ten acres of ground centrally and ac- 
cessibly located. (2) A meeting house with reasonable 
equipment for a modern Sunday school and the other 
activities of a church. (3) A building hard by for the 
social life and general community service of the church. 
(4) A comfortable pastor’s home. (5) An open field pro- 
viding equipment for the athletic sports of the young 
people. Everything there, including brick veneer for all 
the buildings, can be provided at an expense of from 
$15,000 to $20,000. The increase in the value of land 
in the community growing out of a plant like that would 
more than offset the cost of it. For frame buildings 
$10,000 will cover the cost. If anyone doubts that let 
him take it up with the Architectural Bureau of his de- 
nomination. These people have given the matter such 
intelligent study that they have worked out plans thor- 
oughly adequate and surprisingly economical. 

My final earnest plea with our country churches is 
that when they decide to build they do not put up the 
first thing that happens to come into the mind of some 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 127 


good farmer who knows little or nothing about the needs 
of a modern church. But rather let them turn to their 
denomination’s Bureau of church architecture, state their 
case, and get free, sympathetic, expert advice from men 
whose business it is to give this question constant, un- 
divided, religious study. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


In order that rural ministers and lay church leaders may 
read more extensively in the field of rural social problems which 
have a direct bearing on the church, the following carefully 
selected list of books and tracts is appended. Any of these 
books may be secured at publishers prices through any local book 
store. Some of the very best material on rural church work 
is not in books, but in bulletins published by the various de- 
nominational home mission boards and by the agricultural col- 
leges; so these also are listed and strongly recommended. All 
of the government and College bulletins and most of those by 
denominational boards can be secured without cost simply by 
writing to the appropriate bodies. 


Books Directly Related to Church Work. 


“The Rural Church Serving the Community,” E. L. Earp, 
Abingdon Press. 75 Cents. 

“Fear God in Your Own Village,” R. Morse, H. Holt & Co.; 
$1.30. 

“The Country Church and the Rural Problem,” K. L. Butter- 
field, University of Chicago Press. 

“Six Thousand Country Churches,” Gill and Pinchot, Macmillan; 
$2.00. 

“The Community,” E. C. Lindeman, Association Press; $1.60. 

“The Church and the Rural South,” E. DeS. Brunner, Doran Co. 

Lectures at Southern Methodist University on 1923, K. L. But- 
terfield, S. M. U. Press. 

“The Reconstruction of Religion,” C. A. Ellwood, Macmillan; 
$2.25. 

“Christianity and Social Science: a Challenge to the Church,” 
C. A. Ellwood, Macmillan; $1.75. 

“A Social Theory of Religious Education,’ G. A. Coe, Scribner’s; 
$2.25. 


[128] 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 129 


“Religious Education and American Democracy,” W.S. Athearn, 
Pilgrim Press; $1.75. 

“The Church and the Changing Order,’ Shailer Mathews, Mac- 
millan; $1.50. . 

“Childhood and Character,” H. Hartshorne, Pilgrim Press; $1.75. 

“World Survey,” Vols. 1 and 2, Interchurch Press, New York City. 

“Church Life in the Rural South,” E. DeS. Brunner, Doran Co. 

“The Rural Church Movement,” Earp. 

“The Day of the Country Church,” Ashenhurst. 

“Solving the Country Church Problem,” G. A. Bricker. 

“The Country Church in the South,” V. I. Masters. 

“Rural Christianity,’ Chas. Roads. 

“The Challenge of the Country Church,” J. W. Jent. 


Books Indirectly Related to Church Work. 


“Rural Life,” C. J. Galpin, Century Co.; $2.50. 

“The Evolution of a Country Community,” W. H. Wilson, Re- 
vised Edition, Pilgrim Press; $2.25. 

“Community Organization,” J. K. Hart, Macmillan. 

“Rural Social Organization,” E. L. Earp, Abingdon Press. 

“Psychology of Citizenship,” A. D. Weeks, McClurg Co. 

“The Social Trend,” E. A. Ross, Century Co. 

“The Farmer and His Community,” D. Sanderson, Harcourt, 
Brace & Co. | 

“The County Agent and the Farm Bureau,” Burritt, Harcourt, 
Brace & Co. 

“The Brown Mouse,” H. Quick, Bobbs, Merrill & Co. 

“How to Know Your Child,” M. F. Scott, Little, Brown & Co. 

“The School as a Social Institution,” C. L. Robbins, Allyn & 
Bacon. 

“Being Well Born,” M. F. Guyer, Bobbs, Merrill & Co. 

“The Family and Its Members,” Spencer, Lippincott. 

“Laws of Texas” (on education and social questions), Dallas Civic 
Federation; 65 cents. 

“The Meaning of Evolution,’ S. C. Schmucker, Macmillan; 
$2.25. 


130 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


Bulletins Related to Church Work. 


“Outline Study in Christianity and Rural Life Problems,” A. E. 
Holt, Social Service Dept. of Congregational Churches, 14 
Beacon St., Boston. 

“Men’s Work in Rural and Village Churches,” Commission on 
Men’s Work of the National Council, 14 Beacon St., Boston. 

“The Rural Newsletter,” Board of Home Missions and Church 
Extension, M. E., 1701 Arch St., Philadelphia. 

“Service,” Rural Church Number, February, 1922, Southern Meth- 
odist University, Dallas. 

“Buck Creek Parish,” Board of Home Missions and Church 
Extension, M. E., Nashville, Tenn. 

“Four Country Churches of Distinction,” Home Mission Board, 
156 Fifth Ave., New York City. 

“The Community Pastor in the Country,” Board of Home Mis- 
sions, 156 Fifth Ave., New York City. 

“Program of Wallace Presbyterian Church” (Wallace, Texas), 
Board of Home Missions, 156 Fifth Ave., New York City. 

“The Rural Evangel,” Board of Home Missions, 156 Fifth Ave., 
New York City. 

“One Hundred Successful Country Churches,” Baptist Sunday 
School Board, Nashville, Tenn. 

“The Rural Church at Work as Religious Educator,” American 
Baptist Pub. Society, 1701 Chestnut St., Philadelphia. 

“A Program of Catholic Rural Action,” E. V. O’Hara, National 
Catholic Welfare Council, Eugene, Ore. 

“What Every Church Should Know About Its Community,” 
Federal Council of Churches of Christ, 105 East 22nd St., 
New York City. 

“The Church and Country Life,” P. L. Vogt, Federal Council 
of Churches of Christ, 105 East 22nd St., New York City. 
“The Country Church an Economic and Social Force,” C. J. 
Galpin, Agricultural Experiment Station, Madison, Wis. 
“Hundred Country Churches,’ E. P. Alldredge, Baptist Sunday 

School Board, Nashville, Tenn. 


Bulletins Indirectly Related to Church Work. 


No. 1121. “Factors that Make for Success in Farming in the 
South.” 
No. 1173. “Plans for Rural Community Buildings.” 


THE COUNTRY PREACHER 131 


No. 984. “The National Influence of a Single Farm Community.” 

No. 88. “Testing Farms in the South for Efficiency of Manage- 
ment.” 

Children’s Bureau, Washington, D. C. 

No. 65. “Child Care and Child Welfare.” 

Other bulletins which may be had free by writing to the 
proper agency: 

“Community League Organization,” Bulletin by Cooperative 
Educational Association of Virginia, Richmond, Va. 

Year books and bulletins of the National Congress of Mothers 
and Parent-Teachers Association, 1201 Sixth Ave., Washing- 
ton, D. C., State Division, Austin, Texas. 

“Rural and Small Community Recreations.” (Ask for lst of 
publications), Community Service, Inc., No. 1, Madison 
Ave., New York City. . 

Commission on Inter-Racial Cooperation, Atlanta, Ga. 

No. 51. “Rural Primary Groups,” Wisconsin Experiment Sta- 
tion, Madison, Wis. | 

Circular No. 211. “Focusing on the Country Community,” 
West Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station, Morgantown, 
W. Va. 

Circular No. 255. “Lifting the Country Community by Its Own 
Bootstraps,” West Virginia Agri. Exp. Station, Morgantown, 
W. Va. 

Circular No. 265. “Helping the Country Community to Saw 
Wood,” West Virginia Agri. Exp. Station, Morgantown, W. 
Va. 

Bulletins Nos. 23 and 27. “Mobilizing Rural Communities,” and 
“Community Fairs,” Massachusetts Agri. College Ext. Ser- 
vice, Amherst, Mass. 

Bulletin No. 158. “Locating the Rural Community,” Ext. Ser- 
vice, Cornell Agri. College, Ithaca, N. Y. 

Circular No. 222. “Fundamentals of Cooperative Marketing,” 
University of California, Berkeley, Cal. 

Bulletin No. 184. ‘Cooperative Marketing,” University of 
Minnesota, St. Paul, Minn. 

“The Hammond Plan,” “Better Missouri Schools,” etc., Inter- 
national Harvester Co., Educational Dept., Chicago. 

_ Economic and Financial Monthly Bulletin, National City Bank, 
New York. 


132 THE COUNTRY PREACHER 


Bulletin No. 1842. “Play and Recreation,” University of Texas, 
Austin. 

Bulletin No. 278. “Farm Tenancy in the United States,” A. 

and M. College, College Station, Texas. 

Circular No. 117. “Community Organization,” Oklahoma A. 

and M. College, Stillwater, Okla. 
Bulletin No. 54. ‘Historical Pageant,” Extension Service, Cor- 
nell Agri. College, Ithaca, N. Y. 

Every rural minister should receive the annual reports and 
lists of publications of the various Federal departments and 
bureaus, such as: U.S. Department of Agriculture; U. S. Public 
Health Service; U. S. Bureau of Education, etc., and also of the 
various State bureaus, such as education, health, library. These 
may be had free for the asking. Membership in the National 
Country Life Association on the part of country ministers is also 
desirable. For the membership fee of $3.00 per year, the members 
receive the annual proceedings, together with the monthly review 
of the best country life literature. The secretary of this asso- 
ciation is Henry Israel, 375 Lexington Avenue, New York. 








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